3 Website Monetization Strategies To Increase Your Passive Income Overnight

If you’re not using the right website monetization strategies, you won’t be able to make money from your blog even when your content is getting consistent traffic from search engines.

What are the best ways to monetize a site?

Passive income methods that free up your time and do not require you to spend countless hours in front of your laptop screen.

What I’m saying might sound obvious but you’ll be amazed at how much money bloggers leave at the table by not employing the right monetization strategies.

In this detailed article, I’ll share three broad approaches to website monetization that’ll instantly allow you to make more money from your existing traffic without doing anything extra.

Sounds tempting?

Keep reading.

Why Most Bloggers Struggle To Make Money Online?

Making money from your website isn’t a myth.

But it’s certainly not as common or as easy as some bloggers make you think.

Let me share a few interesting stats to back my claim.

According to a study by Ahrefs, 90.63% of all content on the internet gets ZERO visitors.

That’s right! They don’t receive any traffic at all.

And when there’s no traffic on a site, there’s no way to make money from it either.

This is why a completely unrelated survey of around 1000 bloggers found that more than 60% of active bloggers who’re driving traffic to their sites make less than $500 (the majority of them earn nothing)

Source

Why is this the case even for bloggers who’re getting traffic to their sites?

There are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, low-income bloggers are inconsistent and lack the discipline required to make money from their sites. They treat their blogs as side projects and never put in the consistent effort that’s required to grow a profitable blog.

A study by GrowthBadger found that almost 70% of low-income bloggers don’t even research their audience and create content based on their perception of what their readers want.

Source

The second reason for not making money despite getting traffic to your site is not employing the right monetization strategies.

According to a study of more than 4500 content creators by Social media Examiner, here are the most popular ways to make money from blogging.

Source

As you can see, advertising, selling your products, and affiliate marketing are among the top passive income methods bloggers use.

But it’s not just about choosing a monetization model for your site. You also have to apply it properly with the right strategy.

For example, selling digital products and courses is a popular way to make money these days. But no one will buy from you just because you’ve created a course and put it on sale.

You have to attract the right prospects, convert them into subscribers, nurture them through email marketing, and convert them into customers through convincing sales content.

Similarly, every other monetization strategy requires a different strategy to work for your blog.

Which ones should you focus on?

Read my detailed answer in the following sections.

3 Most Common Ways To Generate Passive Income From Your Blog

There are dozens of ways to make money from your blog once you have enough traffic on it.

But generating passive income is the ultimate dream of every blogger.

This is why I want to share three methods that you can apply to start making passive income almost immediately from your site.

Plus, I’ll share the exact strategies to make these monetization methods work for you.

Let’s dive in.

Monetization Method #1: Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is among the most popular ways to make money online.

Why is it so popular?

Because it has a low entry barrier, requires almost no investment, is widely used by brands around the world, and gives you the ability to earn passive income from anywhere.

This is why it is equally popular among established and beginner bloggers.

Source

But what exactly is affiliate marketing?

It is a passive website monetization method in which you get paid for selling products owned by someone else or by generating leads for other businesses through your marketing efforts.

You don’t have to worry about creating the product or providing after-sales service.

Your only job is to promote affiliate products to the right audiences and earn a fixed commission every time you facilitate a sale.

According to a study by Forrester, affiliate marketing is expected to become an $8 billion industry by 2021.

It is also fast becoming one of the top ways advertisers and brands drive sales. According to a survey of the top marketing brands that are making at least $200 million per year, 81% of them actively recruit affiliates to generate sales.

Source

This shows that advertisers are already spending a significant portion of their marketing budgets on affiliate marketing.

And it makes sense for them to do so because they only have to pay their affiliates when they make a sale.

If you have a high traffic website, affiliate marketing is the fastest way to monetize it. You simply have to find the right affiliate products that are in line with the needs of your target audience, start promoting them on your blog, and the commissions start flowing in.

How Much Money Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing

Theoretically, there’s no limit to how much money you can earn with affiliate marketing. The more sales you can drive, the more money you’ll make.

In reality, though, your earnings depend on several factors.

– Price of the product/program you’re promoting

– The commission rate of the product you’re promoting

– The commission model of the product.

– The conversion rate of the product pages on the advertiser’s site.

– The number of visitors on your site per month

– The conversion rate of your affiliate pages.

– The percentage of return traffic on your site.

– Your content strategy

Let’s take the example of Amazon Associates, the world’s most popular affiliate marketing program.

Beginner affiliate marketers who promote Amazon products on their sites typically reach $500-$1000/month in commissions in 12-15 months (depending on their content marketing and SEO strategy).

But there are countless examples of bloggers who started from scratch and crossed 5-figures/month within a year.

Adam Enfroy, for example, started his blog in early 2019 and was making more than $20K/month from affiliate marketing before the end of the year.

His most recent income report shows he made more than $82K in August 2020 out of which $68K+ came through different affiliate programs.

Source

10Beasts is another popular success story of an Amazon affiliate review website in the tech niche started by a 22-year-old from his bedroom.

The site reviewed gaming accessories and gadgets, drone cameras, and other tech products and grew to more than $40K/month within a year.

After running it successfully for a couple of years, the owner flipped 10Beasts for more than $600K.

One of our NicheHacks Facebook Group members, Al-Amin Al Kabir, is another amazing success story of making it big with Amazon niche sites.

He started his niche site from scratch and earned more than 6-figures as an Amazon affiliate in less than a year. He has documented his whole journey in this article.

All of the above examples are of talented individuals who had limited resources and no money to outsource work or invest in advertising.

Yet, they still pulled off amazing feats and made life-changing money with affiliate marketing thanks to their hard work, and intelligent marketing strategies.

I’ve not even mentioned multi-million dollar affiliate sites like BestReviews, TheWireCutter, NerdWallet, etc.

If you want to see more examples, I did a pretty in-depth post here on NicheHacks which lists 20+ successful affiliate sites with their exact revenue and traffic numbers.

In short, there’s a lot of money to be made with affiliate marketing if you adopt the right strategies.

Affiliate Marketing – How Does It Work And How To Get Started

The affiliate marketing process involves 3 main stakeholders.

  • Advertiser/Product Owner: The company which owns the product
  • Affiliate Network: The affiliate platform that connects advertisers with affiliates
  • Affiliate Marketer: The person who promotes the products and earns a fixed commission for every sale.
  • Customer: the end-user who purchases the product.

Here’s a visual representation of how the whole affiliate marketing process works.

Step by step details of how you can get started with affiliate marketing:

Step 1 – You apply for registration to an affiliate marketing platform (usually free).

Step 2 – The platform reviews your application and approves if it meets the requirements (which can vary from your website topic, how high quality it is, whether it has enough traffic, and appears credible).

Step 3 – You’re given access to the marketplace from where you can choose affiliate offers and products to promote on your website.

Step 4 – When you choose a product, you’re given a unique tracking link by the affiliate network that you need to use so that all the sales you refer are credited to your account.

Step 5 – You promote the products on your website, email list, or any other platform where you have an audience.

Step 6 – Someone from your audience clicks your link and buys the product.

Step 7 – The sale is credited to your account by the affiliate network and your commission is added to your digital wallet immediately or after a certain period (in some programs).

Step 8 – You get paid when the payment date arrives or when you choose to withdraw it (varies with platforms – it can range from 30 to 90 days typically).

If you’re starting from scratch, grow our site to at least 100-200 visitors per day before applying for an affiliate program. I say this because most affiliate programs reject applications from completely new sites.

Plus, if you don’t have enough traffic there’s no point in promoting affiliate products because you won’t be able to drive any sales.

However, if your site already receives a healthy number of visitors every month, just find the right affiliate program, and immediately increase your income by promoting relevant affiliate products.

The 3 Main Types Of Affiliate Marketing:

The core concept of affiliate marketing is simple – you get paid for promoting and selling third party products.

However, there are several types of affiliate marketing that differ in how you can promote affiliate products.

Let me quickly describe them to you.

Pay Per Sale Affiliate Marketing

In Pay Per Sale affiliate marketing, you earn a commission only when you promote a product and your referrals end up buying it within the time period defined by the advertiser.

This is the most popular affiliate marketing type that’s followed by the majority of affiliate programs including Amazon Associates, the biggest affiliate program in the world.

Pay Per Lead Affiliate Marketing

In Pay Per Lead affiliate marketing, your job as an affiliate is to drive traffic to the advertiser’s landing page where they can convert into leads by filling a form with their contact info.

Pay Per Action Affiliate Marketing

In Pay Per Action affiliate marketing, you get paid when your referrals perform a certain action (defined by the advertisers) such as making a phone call to a specific number or watching a video, etc.

The 2 Main Types Of Affiliate Products:

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that it’s a popular model in every niche which means there’s an infinite number of products you can promote as an affiliate depending on the needs of your audience.

There are two broad types of affiliate products you can promote.

Physical Products

These are real-world products that must be shipped to your customers when they place an order.

Due to the rise in eCommerce, physical product sales have skyrocketed. According to Statista, the global retail eCommerce is set to exceed $6.5 trillion by 2023.

Source

And since Amazon Associates offers an unlimited range of products that affiliates can promote, most affiliates prefer to promote physical retail products.

Digital Products

Digital products include video courses, training content, membership sites, eBooks, audio content, mastermind groups, software, mobile apps, and other products that can be accessed and used online.

This is also a highly lucrative area for affiliates especially in the software and online education niches where product prices are high and the commission rates are very attractive.

The Types Of Affiliate Commissions:

Most affiliate programs offer one of the following commission types.

Fixed One-Time Commission

In this commission mode, the affiliate earns a fixed commission (a certain percentage of the product price) when they facilitate a sale.

This s a widely followed commission model that’s equally popular in the physical and digital product space.

A2Hosting, for example, offers a one-time commission of $125/sign up to their affiliates.

Source

One-time commission programs usually offer higher commission rates than recurring programs which is why most affiliates prefer them.

Recurring Commission

In this commission model, the affiliates earn a recurring monthly or quarterly commission as long as their referrals keep using the affiliate products they’re promoting.

It is mostly used in the digital marketing space in niches like B2B SaaS, online education, and software.
To promote high-quality affiliate products to your audience, you need to sign up for the right affiliate programs.

Here are some of the best affiliate networks and platforms where you can find products from every niche.

The Best Affiliate Marketing Platforms – How To Find The Right Affiliate Products:

There are many other niche-specific affiliate programs as well that you can find through Google Search.

I’d also recommend reading this detailed article in which we’ve described and ranked 20+ top affiliate networks and this guide to the top influencer marketing networks.

6 Proven Tips To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Before I move on to the next monetization method, here are some quick but practical tips to help you succeed as an affiliate marketer.

i. Choose A Profitable Affiliate Niche

Niche selection is one of the most important factors in determining your success or failure as an affiliate marketer.

What is a niche?

It is a well-defined subset or a more specific target market within a larger industry.

For example,

  • “Pet supplies” is a broad industry but “dog food” is a niche.
  • “Weight loss” is a broad industry but “post-pregnancy weight loss” is a niche.
  • “Sports” is a huge industry but “soccer tips” is a niche.

You can go even more specific and target micro niches (here are a few examples)

Here are the four key components of the right affiliate marketing niche.

  • It is specific but expandable
  • It is based on passions and problems
  • It has high commercial intent and eCommerce activity
  • It is evergreen and always in demand.

If you want to learn more about niche selection, I’ve written this detailed step by step niche selection guide that’ll help you find the right niche for your affiliate site.

ii. Focus On Building Trust With Your Audience

Trust is the key factor is sales because people buy from brands they trust.

If you want to drive affiliate sales consistently, you need to build trust with your audience and position yourself as a niche expert.

According to a study, 61% of consumers prefer clicking on affiliate links from the experts they trust.

Source

And the best way to do that is by consistently publishing actionable and high-quality content that targets the problems of your audience.

iii. Promote Products That Align With Your Audience

Driving sales becomes much easier when you pitch the right products to your audience. Always make sure that the products you’re promoting are relevant to your audience and solve their key problems.

When you do that, you won’t have to do a lot of convincing.

iv. Create Useful And High-Quality Content

Your job as an affiliate is to help your audience make more informed decisions and choose the products that are truly useful to them.

This is why you must create content that objectively reviews different products, shares their pros and cons, and recommends the best products based on facts.

According to research, consumers trust the content that shares both the pros and cons of a product.

Source

Simplifying the decision-making process of your readers should always be the number one focus of your content strategy.

v. Diversify Your Affiliate Portfolio And Traffic Sources

Never limit your site to 1 or 2 affiliate programs only. The same goes for your traffic sources.

Use as many affiliate programs and traffic sources as possible so that your business is never dependant on a single platform for its existence.

Monetization Method #2: Make Money With Google Adsense (And Other CPM Ad Networks)

Have you noticed the text and banner ads that appear on different websites while you’re browsing the internet?

Like this.

Source

You see such ads on a website when it is monetized with Google Adsense, the world’s biggest ads program through which bloggers and content creators can make money online.

Google started the Adsense program in 2003 and is currently used by more than 10 million websites around the world.

Adsense has a simple business model.

It offers both CPM and CPC advertising options to publishers.

In CPM ads, you can place Google Ads on your site and get paid for every 1000 impressions.

In CPC ads, you’ll earn money whenever your visitors click on an ad.

Like affiliate marketing, monetizing your website with Google Adsense has a very low entry barrier which is why it is among the top ways content creators monetize their sites.

If your site has regular traffic, you can start earning money with Adsense immediately.

What Is Google Adsense?

Google runs the world’s biggest advertising company through its Google Ads platform. Millions of advertisers use Google Ads to market their products and services by displaying ads on different websites, mobile apps, video networks, and other online properties.

Google Adsense is the opposite of Google Ads.

Adsense is a publisher program in which you can register your website or any other online platform where you want to show relevant Google Ads.

In short, Google Ads is the platform from where advertisers can run ads and Google Adsense is the platform using which Google recruits publishers and website owners like you who want to earn money by showing ads.

How Much Money Can You Make With Google Adsense

Your earnings with Google Adsense depend largely on two things.

  • Your niche
  • The location of your audience

If you’re in a niche like finance, mortgage, insurance, B2B Saas, etc. where there’s stiff competition between advertisers who’re willing to pay more than the others to drive clicks to their sites, your earnings will be significantly higher.

Why?

Because Google pays 68% of its total ad fee to publishers like you and keeps 32% to itself.

So if an advertiser is paying Google $100 per click and you display their ads on your site as an Adsense publisher, you’ll earn $68 per click while Google will keep $32.

To give you an idea of how much money Google pays its publishers, have a look at its advertising revenue for the last 20 years.

Source

In 2019, Google earned almost $135 billion in advertising revenue. The majority of those ads were displayed on different websites and online properties registered with Adsense.

Since Google pays 68% of its advertising fee to its publishers, Adsense publishers around the world earned almost $87 billion in 2019.

That’s a lot of money.

If you choose to get paid for impressions instead of clicks, Google pays around $2-$3 for every 1000 impressions.

So how much can you earn if you monetize your site with Google Adsense?

No need for guesswork, simply use Google’s own calculator to get an estimate of how much you earn as a publisher.

If you’re in the “pets & animals” niche and the majority of your visitors come from North America, you’ll make $7452/year ($621/month) with Adsense for 50K monthly page views.

The more page views your sites have, the more revenue you can earn.

There are some great examples of people who’re making six-figure per year with Adsense.

Jon Dykstra of FatStacksBlog earns more than $70K per month from 8 different niche sites. A large portion of his income comes from showing ads by Google Adsense and other ad networks on his sites.

Source

Giant publishers like Mashable, BuzzFeed, CNN, BusinessInsider, and countless others make millions of dollars every month with Adsense.

Monetization With Google Adsense – How Does It Work?

Signing up for an Adsense account is pretty simple.

You need to have a Google account using which you can sign up for an Adsense account for free.

The main part of the signup process is when you have to describe the website where you want to display the ads.

Make sure your site is already getting at least 100 visitors per day, has unique and high-quality content, and has no black-hat SEO or banned content (gambling, porn, etc.) in it.

As a part of the signup process, you’ll need to copy/paste the Adsense code to your site that will be used to display ads.

Once the signup process is complete, your site will go under review and you’ll be notified if it is approved for the program.

The great thing about Google Adsense is that Google serves unique ads to every visitor of your site based on their browsing habits, interests, and location.

This increases the probability that your visitors will click on those ads and help you earn more money.

The Best Google Adsense Niches For 2020

As I’ve already mentioned, how much you can earn with Google Ads depends on the location of your audience and your niche.

However, publishers in the following niches generally earn the most per click with Google Adsense.

  • Insurance
  • Online education
  • Marketing & Advertising
  • Legal
  • Internet & Telecom
  • Online banking

Why do these niches pay so well?

Because there’s a lot of competition in these niches and the advertisers are willing to pay premium rates to run their ads.

Have a look at the PPC advertising rates for the top niches in the US.

Source

This is what advertisers in the US are paying Google for every click in these niches. 68% of this amount goes to you, the publisher.

However, these numbers (and the top niches) are different for every country.

Other CPM and CPC Ad Networks -The Best Google Adsense Alternatives

Google Adsense is the clear market leader when it comes to CPC and CPM ads for publishers.

However, there are many other alternatives that you can explore in case you don’t want to use Adsense.

  • Media.net.
  • Ezoic
  • AdThrive
  • PropellerAds.
  • Bidvertiser
  • Adversal.
  • Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
  • Skimlinks.
  • Monumetric.
  • InfoLinks.
  • BuySellAds
  • RevContent

Each of these networks has its own policies so make sure you research them thoroughly before joining a network.

Monetization Method #3: Make Money By Selling Ad Space

Let’s say you’ve already monetized your sites with affiliate marketing and Google Adsense.

But you’re still looking for ways to generate passive income.

How about selling advertising space directly on your website and other platforms that you own?

If you have an established website that receives thousands of visitors per month, direct advertising partnerships can be your biggest revenue source.

There are different pricing models for direct advertising partnerships

  • You can charge for ad space irrespective of the number of clicks or impressions an ad receives
  • You can charge for the number of clicks on an ad
  • You can charge for impressions on ads.

The best option is to charge a good amount for ad space so that you don’t need to measure the number of clicks or impressions.

Here are a few ways you can use it.

4 Ways To Make Money With Direct Advertising Partnerships And Selling Ad Space

There are lots of ways you can use direct advertising to make money but the following four are most commonly used.

01 – Sell Site-Wide Ad Space On Your Website/Blog

You can dedicate advertising space in your blog’s sidebar, header, or footer and sell it to the highest bidder.

Site-wide ads are visible on every page of your site which is why advertisers are willing to pay top dollar for it.

Sewrella, a blog about knitting patterns, is a good example.

According to its latest income report, the site made more than $8K by selling site-wide advertising space.

02 – Sell Ad Space For Specific Content

If the majority of your site’s traffic goes to one or two pages, it makes more sense to sell ads on those pages instead of your whole website.

This is a good option for new websites because even if your site has a couple of high traffic pages you can monetize them with direct ads.

However, you need to make sure that the ads are relevant to the content of your page to make sure that the user experience does not suffer.

03 – Sell Ad Space In Your Email Newsletter

If you have a large email list (or even a small one) with a high engagement rate, you can make a lot of money by selling ad space in your email newsletters.

Almost every top website that has a large email list uses this monetization option because it’s in high demand and advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money for it.

For example, here’s an email newsletter from a leading marketing website. Notice the “Sponsored Content” section which has links to different websites.

The advertisers must have paid thousands of dollars for those links because this newsletter goes out to more than 200K email subscribers.

If you have such a big email list, your weekly newsletter can become a huge revenue source without any effort.

04 – Publish Sponsored Content On Your Site

Another form of direct advertising partnerships is to publish sponsored content on your site.

According to a study by Ahrefs, the average amount of money websites charge for publishing sponsored content is $361.

But that’s just the average amount.

High traffic sites with a large audience and high domain authority easily make thousands of dollars by publishing multiple sponsored articles every month since there’s so much demand for it.

Here’s an example of a top marketing site charging to publish sponsored content.

Source

However, make sure that you mark such content as sponsored and tag the backlinks in it as no-follow and sponsored. Otherwise, you can get into trouble with Google algorithms.

Are You Ready To Increase Your Website’s Earnings?

The website monetization strategies I’ve shared in this post are easy to implement and don’t require much time to set up.

Plus, they’re completely passive income sources that, once activated, require no time commitment.

And the best part is that you can use all of them together at the same time.

However, to make money consistently from any of these monetization strategies, you’ll need to drive lots of traffic to your site every month.

This is why I’d strongly recommend that you read our detailed traffic generation guide to build a sustainable traffic generation strategy for your site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a website monetization strategy?

In simple words, a website’s monetization strategy lays out how it is going to make money from its visitors. There are many different ways to monetize a website depending on its audience and traffic sources.

What is the best way to monetize a website?

Affiliate marketing and display advertising are the primary monetization strategies used by most websites and blogs because they have a low entry barrier and require no prior investment.

The most popular website monetization strategies are affiliate marketing, Google Adsense advertising, and selling advertising space on your site.

What is the difference between CPM and CPC advertising?

A CPM ad network pays you based on the number of impressions the ads on your website recieve. A CPM ad network pays you for the number of clicks on the ads placed on your site.

How much does Google Adsense pay per 1000 impressions?

How much Google Adsense pays you for ad impressions depends on where your traffic is coming from. For sites where most of the traffic comes from the USA, you can earn around $3 for 1000 impressions.

How much do websites make per click?

If you monetize a website with Google Adsense, you get 68% of the per-click cost that Google charges its advertisers. The amount of money per click with Adsense depends on your niche. In general, you can earn anywhere between $0.20 to $15 per click.

What are the best Adsense niches?

The most profitable Adsense niches are the ones where the advertisers are selling high-ticket products/services and are willing to pay a lot of money to Google for advertising. For example, insurance, mortgage, loans, legal services, B2B SaaS, etc. are among the best niches for Adsense websites.

What are the best Google Adsense alternatives?

The most popular Google Adsense alternatives are Media.net, Ezoic, Infolinks, Skimlinks, BuySellAds, and VigLinks

The most popular affiliate networks include Amazon Associates, ClickBank, Commission Junction, Rakuten, ShareASale, BlueHost, and WarriorPlus

How can I make $100 a day?

There are many ways to make more than $100 per day, for example monetizing your site with affiliate products from Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, or selling advertising space on your site to relevant advertisers.

How long does it take to monetize a website?

To make money, websites need to receive consistent traffic. How much traffic? That depends on how you’re monetizing your site. For example, if you’re promoting a high-ticket affiliate product and have a good conversion rate, even 2000 visitors might be enough to make you six figures per year. For Adsense websites, though, you need at least 40K-50K visitors per month to earn a decent amount of money per month.

What types of blogs make the most money?

To be successful, a site needs to have a clear goal, a well-defined audience, and high-quality content that’s optimized for the right keywords to attract search engine traffic. You’ll make money in any niche with any type of blog if you do these things well.

Commission Junction Review: How To Make Money With CJ Affiliate in 2020?

The year 2007 was the first time I heard about someone making six-figures per year on autopilot from Commission Junction (now known as CJ Affiliate by Conversant)

“What’s Commission Junction?”, I asked a tech-savvy friend.

“It’s an affiliate marketing platform”

“What’s affiliate marketing?”, I innocently asked.

That’s right, I heard about Commission Junction (CJ) even before I had any idea what affiliate marketing was.

That’s how long it has been around.

Almost every experienced and successful affiliate marketer has been a CJ affiliate at some point in time.

But is it still as vibrant and profitable as its early years? Should you become a publisher on CJ Affiliate and start promoting products? Or is CJ a dying platform that makes money by scamming its affiliates and suspending their accounts when it’s time to pay their commissions?

In this detailed beginner’s guide, I’ll be responding to all these questions. I’ll also tell you how to get started with Commission Junction and the best ways to make money from it as an affiliate marketer.

Sounds interesting?

Keep reading.

What Is Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate by Conversant)?

Commission Junction is among the world’s top affiliate marketing platforms for digital & physical products (although mostly digital). It started operations back in 1998 when the internet was a very different place from what it is today.

Affiliate marketing was still a new concept in the online world and making money was much easier since there was no competition, Google algorithms, or unnecessary affiliate regulations.

As a result, CJ quickly became one of the fastest growing online businesses and attracted thousands of affiliate marketers who made millions from it in its early days.

Because of its exponential growth, Commission Junction was acquired in 2003 by ValueClick and was later rebranded in 2014 as CJ Affiliate by Conversant.

The core business, however, remained the same.

More than two decades later, CJ Affiliate is still one of the most popular affiliate networks with thousands of advertisers and pays more than 1.8 billion dollars every year in affiliate commissions.

In fact, according to a market analysis by Datanyze, CJ Affiliate is the second most popular affiliate network after Amazon Associates, with a market share of almost 8%.

Source

Affiliate marketers prefer Amazon Associates because of their physical product range. Among the platforms exclusively dealing in digital products, CJ Affiliate is the clear market leader ahead of giant corporations such as Rakuten and ShareASale.

But it’s not just about the number of sites that use CJ Affiliate.

The quality of affiliates is an even bigger question and this is an area where CJ Affiliate once again leaves behind all its competitors.

According to SimilarTech, CJ Affiliate is the number one choice among the top 10 thousand affiliate websites in the world.

Source

This includes multi-million dollar publishers such as CNN, TIME, BuzzFeed, and many others who rely on CJ Affiliate to find relevant and high-quality brands that they can promote to earn a consistent income through affiliate marketing.

Why The Leading Brands Use CJ Affiliate?

Some of the world’s most popular and trusted brands including Barnes&Noble, GoPro, and Lowe’s recruit affiliate marketers through CJ Affiliate.

But why?

I tried to find the exact answer to this question but there are a lot of different perspectives on this if you search the internet.

But here’s my conclusion.

The number one reason why brands trust CJ Affiliate is its strict affiliate recruitment and publisher policies. This gets them a lot of hate from affiliate marketers because they’re more focused on recruiting the right affiliates than just boosting their numbers.

But it makes them ideal for advertisers because they know they’re working with the best publishers available.

Recruiting affiliates, of course, can drastically improve the ROI of a company’s marketing efforts because advertisers only need to pay affiliates when they sell their products.

I also really like the incremental calculator on CJ Affiliate’s website that lets advertisers calculate exactly how much increase in sales they can expect by working with CJ Affiliate.

Advertisers can get a comparison by entering their existing traffic and sales numbers. I used random numbers to see how it works.

Based on these numbers, this is the comparison CJ Affiliate showed me.

It shows several other states that do a great job of convincing advertisers to start recruiting affiliates.

Overall, I think it’s the credibility of CJ Affiliate and its marketing strategy that helps them attract such high profile advertisers.

Why Affiliate Marketers Use CJ Affiliate?

I’ve already shown you how popular Commission Junction is among affiliate marketers.

The reason is simple.

It’s a reliable platform that gives you access to some of the world’s most lucrative and credible affiliate programs.

No matter what niche you’re in, you can find relevant products, membership programs, training courses, and other types of affiliate offers to match the needs of your audience.

Plus, the payout rate and cycle are pretty convenient so there’s no reason not to join CJ Affiliate as a publisher.

However, despite its high standards, CJ Affiliate still has its share of crappy products. It’s not like you can pick any product from CJ and immediately start making money from it.

Not at all.

You have to be really choosy and need to consider several factors before signing up for a product.

But more on that later in the post.

The Major Pros & Cons Of Commission Junction For Affiliate Marketers

There’s a lot to like about CJ Affiliate but it doesn’t mean it has no weaknesses.

Let’s look at some of the major pros and cons of Commission Junction to help you decide if its the right affiliate platform for you.

  • CJ Affiliate is among the oldest and most credible affiliate networks for digital & physical products
  • It has some seriously big brands on board as advertisers.
  • Many second and third-tier brands also join CJ Affiliate as advertisers because of the top brands
  • CJ offers one of the best reporting dashboards in the affiliate industry with real-time transaction monitoring
  • They offer timely payouts within 20-days of the month’s end (in which you made the sale)
  • Filtering and choosing affiliate programs is quite simple
  • Creating affiliate links is a hassle-free process in CJ
  • The minimum payment threshold is a friendly $50 for direct deposits.
  • CJ offers a very limited range of physical product affiliate programs. Its primary strength is in the digital product space
  • It has a long learning curve for beginners because of the huge number of programs and options available (a good problem to have IMO)
  • Their affiliate approval rate is lower than other platforms so you need to have a functional website or any other platform where you’re generating traffic before applying. Not ideal for complete beginners
  • Even when you get accepted as an affiliate on CJ, it doesn’t mean you automatically qualify for every affiliate program listed on the platform. You’ll have to apply to every program separately
  • CJ does not offer payouts via PayPal or checks which is a big turn-off for many affiliates.
  • CJ certainly isn’t the best when it comes to customer support. You need to make sense of things yourself or wait for days to get a response from their support reps.

Is Commission Junction A Scam? 

A Research-Based Answer

If you search Commission Junction on Google, you’ll come across many different forum threads and user reviews claiming that it’s a complete scam.

Here’s an example.

Source

But you’ll also see positive reviews like this one.

Source

Here’s another example

Source

So what’s the truth?

Is Commission Junction really just a big scam that has partnered with the world’s top brands to plunder poor affiliates who’re just trying to make a living online?

Not really.

Every comment on the web has a context and you can’t decide whether a company is a scam based on just a few comments by dissatisfied affiliates.

The mistake that most new affiliates make with CJ is that they don’t carefully read the terms and conditions before joining an affiliate program.

Remember, every affiliate program listed on CJ has its own set of rules. For example, some programs allow traffic from only a handful of sources.

Let’s say a program does not allow PPC traffic to affiliate offers. But you sign up for it and start driving traffic with PPC ads.

Your dashboard will keep showing your progress and your sales numbers and everything will appear normal.

Until the payout date arrives because that’s when the affiliate program will analyze your traffic sources.

And when they discover that you’ve sent traffic from banned sources, they’ll deactivate your account.

Secondly, remember that the affiliate programs listed on CJ are independent advertisers. Ideally, CJ should make sure there are no agreement violations by their advertisers and the interests of their affiliates are protected.

But that doesn’t happen in some cases (from at least what I’ve seen in research).

That’s why you (as an affiliate) must choose advertisers carefully. Only work with well-known advertisers with a clean background and a long list of successful products.

Don’t jump on a product just because it pays well (I’ll share specific metrics you should consider).

In short, CJ itself is not a scam but since it is such a huge affiliate platform, there can be cases where advertisers try to take advantage of affiliates.

So be careful in choosing the right programs to promote.

Steps To Become An Affiliate On Commission Junction

You can become an affiliate on CJ for free by signing up as a Publisher on the signup page.

This will redirect you to a simple sign up form that you need to fill to create your account and confirm your email address.

This is the confirmation email you’ll receive once you submit the signup form.

Once you click on the “Create My CJ Publisher Account” link, you’ll be redirected to a page where you’ll need to read and agree to their policies and affiliate terms & conditions. You also need to certify that you’re at least 18 years old to operate an affiliate account.

Once you’re done with this step, you’ll be redirected to the login page where you can sign in to your CJ Publisher account.

Can you start promoting affiliate products now? Not so fast.

Commission Junction Publisher Onboarding

You still need to activate your account by completing several onboarding steps that include submitting your tax documents, completing your profile, adding your website, app, or any other promotional property for review, etc.

Although you need to complete every section in this list, two of them are really important and will largely determine your success or failure as an affiliate on CJ.

The first one is your Network Profile.

This is your description as a publisher that is visible to the advertisers on CJ when you apply for an affiliate program.

Don’t take it lightly because it plays a major role in your acceptance/rejection in a program.

To write an engaging business profile, describe your business model, its primary goals, the key strengths that make you different, and why you’ll be perfect as an affiliate partner. If you have your website’s traffic numbers or any other stats to back your claims, that’s even better.

But be concise and mention the most important information upfront.

The other section in your onboarding process that’s important is “Promotional Property”

There are four sections here in which you need to share as much information about your promotional property as possible.

This is the primary platform you’ll be using to drive traffic to the affiliate offers you choose from CJ.

It can be a website, a blog, a mobile app, a social media, profile, an email list, a paid advertising campaign, or anything else in the list below.

The platform you submit in your application (for example a blog) needs to have an existing audience and regular monthly visitors.

A brand new platform that’s still struggling to attract traffic will most likely be ignored by advertisers.

The other important thing here is to choose your primary promotional model. To be more precise, you have to choose the ways you provide value to your audience with your promotional platform.

These two sections will determine what kind of advertisers work with you. For example, if email marketing is your primary traffic source, you will mostly be working with advertisers who’re looking for email traffic.

To finish the onboarding process and activate your account, complete the remaining steps by submitting your tax information, company details, and providing your payment information.

How To Get Paid As An Affiliate On CJ Affiliate

Commission Junction offers only two payment options – Direct Bank Deposits and Payoneer.

Direct Deposits are available to affiliates from a limited list of countries. In case you’re not eligible for bank deposits, you can use Payoneer for international payments.

Previously, CJ also processed payments via check but discontinued that option in October 2020. It also doesn’t offer PayPal or credit card payments.

To complete your bank details on CJ, you first need to submit your tax documents and company details.

After that, you can enter your bank details on the Payments page from the onboarding list.

Payment Frequency & Minimum Amount

The minimum payment amount for CJ affiliates is $50 while the maximum amount for a single withdrawal is $1000.

You’ll need to request multiple withdrawals if your amount is more than $1000.

As for the payment schedule, you’re paid 20 days after the month in which you make a sale. This means if you sell a product in January, you’ll be paid for it on the 20th of February.

Commission Junction Affiliate Platform – How Does It Work?

Once you complete the signup process, you’ll gain access to the Publisher dashboard which gives you a snapshot of your performance as a CJ affiliate marketer, plus several other important pieces of information.

The most important section in this dashboard for you is the Performance Summary.

Here’s what it shows for your selected duration.

Commission: The total commission you’ve earned by selling affiliate products or generating leads.

Sales: The total number of sales you’ve facilitated.

Lead: The total number of leads you’ve referred.

Clicks: The total number of clicks on your affiliate links

Impressions: The total number of impressions on your affiliate ads

Publisher EPC: It represents your Earnings Per 100 Clicks (EPC). For example, if you get 1000 clicks on your affiliate links that result in $5000 in commissions, your EPC will be $500.

Conversion: The percentage of clicks you’ve generated that converted into sales or leads.

By looking at this section, you can easily gauge your performance as an affiliate/publisher on CJ.

The other important section is Messages where you’ll recieve any announcements or messages from CJ.

Your CJ publisher dashboard also shows a list of the newest advertisers on the platform. You can use the tabs in this section to view the top advertisers as well as recommended advertisers based on your profile.

On the top of your screen, there are links to the other key sections of your account.

  • Account (your account info and settings)
  • Advertisers (to find affiliate programs)
  • Links (to create affiliate links)
  • Widgets
  • Reports (detailed performance stats)
  • Mail (messages from CJ)
  • Placements
  • PayPerCall (find PPC affilaite programs)

I’ll explain Widgets and Placements later in the article.

Overall, I really like the clean look of this dashboard since it only shows you the most important information and shares the links to the rest of the sections.

This is what dashboards are meant for, right? I never understand why some affiliate networks try to put everything possible on the publisher dashboard. It only leads to confusion.

Thankfully CJ’s publisher dashboard is different.

What Affiliate Programs Are Available On Commission Junction?

The biggest reason we affiliates use platforms like ClickBank and CJ is to find high quality, reliable, and relevant affiliate programs for our audiences.

So what kind of affiliate programs/advertisers are available on CJ?

Are they easy to find and filter? Can you easily identify the best selling programs and the ones with the highest payouts?

This is exactly what we’ll discuss in this section.

There are thousands of digital and physical product affiliate programs listed on Commission Junction. However, marketers usually prefer it for digital products.

The three broad affiliate program types are

Pay Per Sale: You earn a commission when your drive sales

Pay Per Lead: You earn a commission when you refer leads

Pay Per Call: You earn a commission when you generate phone calls

How do you find the best advertisers to promote as an affiliate?

I’ll explain this in the next section.

Finding Legit & Profitable Affiliate Programs/Advertisers On CJ Affiliate

To find the best performing affiliate programs in any niche, head over to the Advertisers page from your main Publisher dashboard in CJ

CJ does a great job in this section when it comes to search filters and ways to find the right advertisers. For a new user, it might seem like a bit of an overkill but these are really helpful tools to find exactly the kind of programs you want.

To be precise, here are the filters you can use to find different advertisers.

As you can see, you can search advertisers by name or relevant niche keywords to find affiliate programs.

You can also apply the following filters to make your searches more focused

  • Advertiser
  • Status
  • Category
  • Serviceable Area
  • Language
  • Advertiser’s Country
  • Geographic Source
  • Currency

Each of these search filters has more detailed options when you click on them.

This is the complete interface that you’ll see when you go to the Advertiser’s page

Since I’ve not applied any filters yet, you can see the total number of results in 2902 which shows all the advertisers on CJ right now.

How do you evaluate an advertiser and find out if they’re worth promoting?

Apart from relevance to your audience, the key metrics to remember are Network Earnings and EPC.

Network Earnings: The overall performance of an advertiser on Commission Junction. The green bar represents the volume of commissions paid by the advertisers to the publishers on CJ. The bigger the bar, the better.

Advertiser EPC: EPC shows how much the affiliates are earning per 100 clicks from a program. A high EPC shows a profitable program.

How do you find the right programs?

By using a combination of these two filters – Network Earnings and EPC.

A high EPC score alone doesn’t give you the full picture. I recommend searching for your niche programs by applying the Category filter, sorting the results by Network Earnings High to Low, and then finding high EPC programs.

This will give you the list of programs that have been consistently making money on CJ and also have a high conversion rate.

This is also important because, despite its high standards, CJ still has its share of low-quality products and dubious affiliate programs. By taking both Network Earnings and EPC into account, you’ll be able to find the most reliable programs in your niche and minimize the risk of any disputes with the advertiser.

To view the details of any program and read its terms and conditions, just click on it to open a dropdown section with all the details.

For example, here are the details of one of the top-selling web hosting affiliate programs on CJ

It tells you everything you need to know about the program. For example the best selling regions, the original website and social media accounts of the company, a detailed description of the target audience, and the program terms.

Remember that you have to apply separately for every affiliate program listed on CJ.

Every program has its own set of requirements and unfortunately, most of them look for established affiliates which means it can be a bit hard for a total newbie to get into a popular program.

But if your platform is strong and you have an engaged audience, you can still be accepted into any program.

Most advertisers on CJ have multiple products listed in their product section. And each product can have multiple affiliate links like text links, banners, animated banners, images, etc.

Each link routes your visitors to a different landing page or product offer (depending on your program).

Finding these links with CJ’s classic link search interface can be confusing for a new user.

Thankfully they now offer several innovative linking options as well.

Overall, here are the methods you can use to create affiliate links on Commission Junction.

– Find Links On The Advertiser Page

– Use The Link Search Interface

– Use The Deep Link Generator Tool

– Use Page Based Linking Tool

– Create Product Widgets

– Create Link Placement Opportunities

Let me quickly describe each of them

  • Find Links On The Advertiser Page

This is the simplest method in which you’ll go to the Advertiser page, search for relevant programs and, if you get approved, click on the Get Link button to find all the links of the product.

The advertisers who have multiple products have a ”P” button next to the Get Link button on the Advertiser page (as shown in the screenshot)

When you click on this button you’ll get the list of all their products along with their affiliate links.

Simply copy the links and use them in your promotional campaigns.

  • Use The Link Search Interface

The link search interface allows you to find relevant products and affiliate links by searching for your niche keywords.

You can also search for product links from a specific advertiser or refine your search using the search filters on the page.

  • Deep Link Generator

Deep Link Generator is a useful CJ link tool that allows you to create deep links without having to log in to your CJ account.

Just install the CJ deep link bookmarklet to your browser, visit the website of any CJ advertiser for whom you’ve been approved as an affiliate, find a product to promote, and click on the bookmarklet to generate a deep link for your promotional campaigns.

  • Page-Based Link Tools

Simply copy a line of javascript to your website’s code that will automatically monetize any products that you link in your content that also exist on CJ (and you’ve been approved for it)

In easier words, once you copy/paste this code to your site, you won’t need to create the usual ugly affiliate links.

Instead, you simply copy the products link to your site and CJ will detect if you’re a valid affiliate and credit you with any sales that are generated through it.

  • Create Product Widgets

This feature allows you to create slideshows of multiple products from the different affiliate programs you’ve joined on CJ.

You can embed these widgets on your website or any other approved platform and you’ll be credit for any sales that are generated from it.

Creating a widget is also pretty simple where you get a list of all your approved products that you can drag & drop to a widget.

  • Create Link Placement Opportunities

This is an innovative linking solution for high-quality publishers.

Here’s how it works.

You can create link opportunities on your website (or any other approved platform) and list them publicly for any advertisers who’re interested in marketing their products.

You don’t even have to be an approved affiliate for an advertiser to approach you for a placement opportunity.

If you have a high-traffic website, this particular linking option can be really useful for you.

An Important Thing To Note

Most affiliate offers have a certain life duration after which their links become invalid and you’re not credited for any sales that you refer to them.

To make sure that you’re not promoting any expired or invalid offers, keep an eye on the “Tasks” section in your main Publisher dashboard.

In the case of invalid offers, you’ll see “Review __ click(s) from invalid links” in the tasks section.

Plus, you’ll also get a notification in your dashboard when an ad becomes invalid or stops working for any reason.

So keep your eyes open otherwise you might end up promoting a useless offer for no reward.

5 Tips To Make Money As An Affiliate With Commission Junction

Before I say goodbye, let me share a few proven tips that’ll help you make a consistent affiliate income from Commission Junction.

1. Stay Focused On A Well-Defined Niche

Ten years ago you could’ve grabbed random affiliate product links from CJ and promoted them on the same website (or even in the same article) successfully.

You can’t do that anymore.

If you want high-quality advertisers to approve you as an affiliate, you have to position yourself as a niche expert with a dedicated following.

The more influence you have in a niche, the easier it’ll be for you to not only get accepted in high-quality affiliate programs but also negotiate special rates with advertisers that are not available to other affiliates.

2. Grow Your Email List To Maximize Profits

If you want to drive repeats affiliate sales, building an email list should be your number one priority.

Email marketing is among the most cost-effective ways to market a product. When someone joins your email list, they show trust in your content and allow you to contact them with more offers.

Make use of this exclusive permission by promoting useful, and high-quality products to your subscribers.

3. Create Problem Solving Content Around Your Products

Amateur affiliates create all their content about the products they’re promoting.

Successful affiliates, however, create content that focuses on the problems that their products solve and pitch the product as a solution to their audience’s problems.

There’s a huge difference in both these approaches.

The first one is completely focused on selling the product by singing endless praises and directly asking the customers to buy it.

The second one stays focused on the problems of the customers, shows them how they can be solved, and pitch the product as a possible solution.

In marketing terms, we call this approach content marketing and it always works better than the direct approach.

4. Stay Away From Low-Quality Offers

Just because a product has a high EPC doesn’t mean you start promoting it immediately. Make sure it is relevant to our audience and solves their core problems.

More importantly, research the advertiser to ensure they have a clean track record. Go to their website, read online reviews, check their social media profiles, and their Network Earnings on CJ.

Remember, promoting even a single poor quality product can ruin your reputation and hurt your future sales prospects badly.

5. Take Advantage Of Seasonal Offers

Most advertisers offer special affiliate links and products for events and occasions such as New Year, Boxing Day, Christmas, Cyber Monday, etc.

Always keep an eye on such offers, grab them early, and run well-planned campaigns for maximum ROI.

Are You Ready To Become An Affiliate On Commission Junction (CJ)?

CJ Affiliate has a lot more competition from the days it first started, but it’s still a high-quality affiliate network with a lot to offer especially if you’re an established affiliate looking for high ticket offers.

However, CJ is still only a platform and doesn’t automatically guarantee success.

To make money on CJ consistently, you need to go back to the basics of affiliate marketing, identify your niche, build your tribe, and promote high-quality products that solve the problems of your audience.

If you’re willing to play the long game, CJ can be a consistent source of high ticket affiliate offers that you can promote to your audience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate by Conversant)?

Commission Junction (also known as CJ Affiliate by Conversant) is one of the world’s most popular affiliate marketing platforms which has been connecting affiliate marketers with brands and advertisers since 1998.

What does Commission Junction do?

Commission Junction provides a platform where brands can list their affiliate programs and affiliates can sign up for the programs they find suitable for their audiences.

Commission Junction vs. CJ Affiliate by Conversant – What’s the difference?

Commission Junction was rebranded in 2014 as CJ Affiliate by Conversant. Both names represent the same company.

How do Commission Junction affiliates make money?

Commission Junction affiliates and publishers make money by earning a commission every time they sell a product listed on the CJ Affiliates platform.

Who is the CEO of Commission Junction affiliate?

Mayuresh Kshetramade is the CEO of CJ Affiliate by Conversant.

What is a CJ Publisher?

Every affiliate registered by Commission Junction who publishes promotional content to sell the products listed on CJ is called a CJ Publisher.

How do I become a CJ Affiliate?

You can become a publisher/affiliate on CJ by signing up for a free affiliate account.

What Is EPC in CJ Affiliate?

EPC represents “Earnings per 100 Clicks” for an affiliate product listed on CJ Affiliate.

A high EPC score means a product is converting well for the affiliates who are promoting it.

What types of affiliate products/programs can you find on Commission Junction?

Commission Junction mostly lists digital products like training, membership products, video courses, eBooks, etc. in almost every major industry. However, affiliate programs for physical products are also listed on it. Most of the programs follow the CPA model which means the affiliates are paid a commission when a customer purchases the product they’re promoting, or signs up as a lead, or makes a phone call as a result of their marketing efforts.

Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate) vs. ClickBank – which one is better?

Both ClickBank and Commission Junction are among the oldest and most popular affiliate networks for digital products. However, CJ Affiliate has more well-known brands and large corporations as its customers while ClickBank is more popular among small product creators.

13 Affiliate Marketing KPIs And Profitability Factors To Consider When Choosing A Product

How do you decide if a product is worth promoting as an affiliate?

Apart from the obvious things like relevancy to your audience and high commission rates, what else do you look for in a product?

If you’re struggling to answer this question, you’re not alone.

New affiliate marketers rarely look beyond these two things when choosing affiliate products.

As a result, they leave a lot of money on the table.

Successful affiliate marketers are different.

They evaluate the overall profitability of a product instead of jumping on it just because it offers an attractive commission.

This is why they make MUCH more profits promoting even low priced products as compared to newbies who go after every shiny object without fully understanding it.

So what exactly should you evaluate in an affiliate product?

In this detailed article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Let’s dive in.

What Are Affiliate Marketing KPIs And Profitability Factors?

To decide whether you should promote a product or not, you need to look at the bigger picture beyond the commission rate a product offers.

In more specific terms, you need to evaluate an affiliate product against the right KPIs and profitability factors.

Don’t get confused by the fancy terminology.

A KPI is simply a measurable value (a number/score) that helps you understand if a product is profitable for your business or not.

They’re primarily used for measuring the performance of your business but you can also use them as a benchmark for evaluating affiliate products.

Here are a few examples to help you understand what KPIs are used for.Source

KPIs are used differently in different contexts but we don’t want to go into the details because it’s irrelevant from an affiliate marketing perspective.

All you need to understand is that evaluating a product on the right KPIs will help you make the right choice.

The same goes for other profitability factors outside the standard KPIs.

They’re the real questions you need to ask when choosing an affiliate product because they give you a full picture of what you’ll actually earn from a product in the long run.

In the following sections, I’ll share the key factors (including several KPIs) you need to consider when deciding whether an affiliate product is worth promoting or not.

01 – Affiliate Program Type

This is the first thing you need to consider when choosing an affiliate product.

There are several types of affiliate marketing programs with completely different customers and marketing channels.

Plus, the amount of money you make with a product will greatly vary depending on the affiliate program type.

What are the different types of affiliate programs?

Pay Per Sale Affiliate Marketing

In Pay Per Sale affiliate marketing, you earn a commission when your referrals purchase the advertiser’s product.

This is the most common affiliate marketing model and has the best long-term business prospects because it allows you to build an audience and drive repeat sales.

Amazon Associates, the world’s leading affiliate marketing program, is a prime example of this affiliate model (you qualify for a commission when your referrals purchase a product).

The commission rates in Pay Per Sale affiliate programs are usually a lot higher (from 10% to 75%) as compared to the other affiliate models.

Pay Per Lead Affiliate Marketing

In Pay Per Lead (also known as Cost Per Action (CPA) affiliate marketing), your referrals don’t need to purchase a product for you to earn a commission.

Instead, PPL campaigns reward you when your referrals complete an action like filling a survey form or a contact form, downloading an eBook, making a phone call, or land on a specific page.

You can find CPA affiliate offers on platforms like MaxBounty or Flexoffers.

The commission rates and payouts in these affiliate campaigns are pretty low plus it’s a short-term affiliate model where you never really get to build a relationship with your audience.

Most of the time, the traffic for such campaigns comes through paid advertising campaigns.

Hybrid Affiliate Marketing

Some affiliate programs offer a combination of the CPA and Pay Per Sale affiliate models.

Constant Contact, a leading email marketing platform, is a good example.

This particular affiliate program offers $5 for every lead that signs up for a free trial and $65 for every lead that converts into a customer.

Hybrid affiliate programs are rare but offer the best of both worlds.

How Affiliate Program Type Impacts Your Earnings

The difference in earnings between these two affiliate marketing models can be significant.

For example, in CPA marketing you’ll rarely drive repeat sales because of the nature of the products/services. Plus, you’ll mostly be driving traffic using paid advertising which means you’ll need to invest money upfront. The commission rates are also typically low but the sales cycle is shorter and faster.

For example, a typical CPA offer would pay you $0.5-$1 for every referral that fills and submits a contact form.

In Pay Per Sale, the products are more expensive, offer higher commissions, and allow you to earn more per customer in the long-run. Plus, you can build an audience and drive repeat sales for most products. However, it’s harder to drive traffic and convert the leads into customers.

This is why most affiliate marketers prefer the Pay Per Sale model.

When you’re choosing a product to promote, make sure you understand what affiliate model it belongs to and how much it can help you earn in the long-run.

02 – The Type Of Affiliate Commission On Offer

From here onwards, we’ll stay focused on Pay Per Sale affiliate marketing since that’s the model we recommend to our readers.

One of the biggest factors to consider when promoting a product/program is the commission model it offers.

There are mainly two types of commission models and your earnings can vary a lot depending on which one you choose.

One-Time Commission

In one-time commission programs, you only get paid once when your referral initially purchases the product. There are no commissions if your referral renews subscription, upgrades the product or purchases it again after the first term expires.

BlueHost, which runs the biggest affiliate program in the web hosting niche, is an example of the one-time commission model where you’re paid $65 for every qualified sale.

This is the most common commission type used by retail affiliate programs like Amazon Associates and many other leading affiliate programs in the B2B software and services niche as well.

Recurring Commission

In recurring commission programs, you sell once but keep getting paid every month as long as your referral is subscribed to the product.

This is a highly profitable commission model but only works in SaaS and subscription-based services.

For example, the ClickFunnels affiliate program offers up to 40% recurring commissions to its affiliates.

GetResponse, one of the best email marketing & automation tools, offers both one-time and recurring commissions.

This example will help you understand the long-term advantage of recurring commissions.

Let’s say your referral signs up for the $49/month Plus Package in GetResponse.

If you opt for a one-time commission, you’ll earn $100 once and that’s the end of the story.

But if you choose the recurring commission program that offers 33% of the sales price as commission every month, you’ll earn $16.17/month for as long your referral remains a GetResponse user.

In one year, you’ll earn $161.7 from one customer.

Because switching email services isn’t easy, and GetResponse is a really good service in the first place, your referrals are likely to stick around for several years if they’re getting value from the tool.

If you refer 10 customers who stick around for just one year, you’ll earn a total of $1617 as compared to $1000 for the same number of customers in the same period for the same product.

And the difference will keep getting bigger as your number of referrals increases.

03 – Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is one of the most important KPIs for affiliates promoting SaaS and subscription-based products (affiliate programs).

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

CLV is the total monetary value (profits) an organization earns from an average customer during his/her time with the company.

Since you’re an affiliate marketer, CLV for you will be the profits you’ll make in commission (on average) from a referral throughout its lifetime.

In simpler terms, CLV is the average amount of money (commissions) you’ll make from every customer you refer to a SaaS or subscription-based business.

As I said, this is only applicable to recurring commission programs.

When you know the CLV of a product, you can estimate the number of recurring commissions you’re expected to earn by referring a customer.

Let me help you understand this concept with an example.

ConvertKit, a popular email marketing tool, offers a 30% recurring commission for every customer you refer to them.

For 3000 subscribers, ConvertKit charges its $41/month billed annually. At 30% commission, this means you’ll earn $12.3/month for every successful referral.

Over 12 months, this commission will be $147.6 per customer.

Suppose you refer 10 customers to ConvertKit. 6 of them stick for the whole year while 4 customers leave after the 5th month.

What’s your total annual commission from ConvertKit?

Customers retained for 12 months @ $12.3 commission per month

(12.3 x 12) x 6 = $885.6

Customers retained for 5 months

(12.3 x 5) x 4 = $246

Total Average Commission Per Customer in 1 Year From ConvertKit

$885.6 + $246 = $1131.6

$1131.6/10 = $113.16

So on average, referring a customer to ConvertKit gives you $113.16 per year.

Some affiliate programs like ClickFunnels offer additional commissions for products your referrals purchase during their subscription tenure.

In such cases, you’ll add them to the annual revenue per customer to get a more precise per customer value over a year.

However, you can only get these numbers after promoting a product for a few months because no company publicly shares its CLV.

But you can get in touch with other affiliates promoting the same product or the product’s affiliate manager and ask them the average number of months a customer uses their product.

This would help you estimate a rough number you can expect to earn per customer per year.

How is this number useful?

When you know how much you’re set to earn per customer by promoting a product, you can compare it with other similar products to see if it’s worth your time and effort.

For example, if an affiliate product offers 70% recurring commissions but you know that the average customer of this product doesn’t stick around for more than a month, it’s much more profitable to promote a product that offers 30% recurring commissions but retains its customers for 12+ months.

04 – Product Purchase Frequency And Upselling Potential

This is another key factor to consider when choosing an affiliate product.

Product purchase frequency is the number of times an average customer purchases a product in a given period. This is different from the recurring commission model that subscription businesses offer.

Why is it important?

Because the more frequently a product is purchased, the more you can earn from it as an affiliate.

For example, a product that customers buy once in several years offers $75/sale. In comparison, there’s another product with a much higher purchase frequency (several times a year) and offers $15/sale.

In most cases, promoting the second one will result in higher profits per year.

I know what you’re thinking. No retail affiliate program offers commissions on repeat product sales.

I agree, not in my knowledge.

But a high product purchase frequency means that the customers regularly have to make the buying decision. This gives you a better chance to attract customers who’re purchasing competing products.

In retail products, the purchase frequency is generally higher for consumable products. Categories like electronics and home appliances also have a high purchase frequency.

Other than retail, online services like logo design, application development, content marketing, etc. also have a high purchase frequency.

The other factor that’s closely related to purchase frequency is the upselling potential of a product.

This simply means that the product you’re selling can be upgraded in some way or there are other complementing products that your customers can purchase to make their original purchase more useful.

For example, if you’re promoting web hosting services as an affiliate, you can also upsell logo design and website design services.

Should you only promote products with a high purchase frequency?

Not really.

Purchase frequency is an important metric for sure, but the right approach is to build a product portfolio that includes both short-term and long-term products with low and medium-high purchase frequency respectively.

Affiliate cookie duration is the time in which your referral needs to purchase a product for you to be eligible for a commission.

For example, the affiliate cookie duration for Amazon Associates is 24 hours only. This means that the customers you refer to Amazon must purchase a product within the 24-hour cookie duration for you to qualify for a commission. If they purchase after 24 hours, you won’t earn any money from their purchases.

Source

The Shopify affiliate program, on the other hand, has a cookie duration of 30 days.Source

This is a crucial factor to consider when choosing an affiliate product because the purchase process for every product is different.

For example, you’ll spend way more time evaluating your choices, comparing prices, checking features, etc. when you’re purchasing a new car as compared to a cheaper product like a juicer or weighing machine.

If the product you’re promoting has an unrealistic cookie duration that’s just not long enough to allow you to close deals, many of your referred leads will be lost.

Therefore, always check the cookie terms when signing up as an affiliate for a product.

06 – Affiliate Support And Promotional Material

You really like a product, it offers an attractive commission rate, and it’s in high demand.

Sounds like the perfect product to promote, right?

Not so fast.

You might regret signing up for an affiliate program if it doesn’t offer any dedicated support for affiliates. This also includes ready to use marketing and promotional material that could save you hours of work and make your job much easier.

Many leading affiliate programs offer dedicated affiliate relationship managers who help you promote their products the right way, share useful strategies that are working for their top affiliates, give you ideas for improving your campaigns, and even suggest what products you should promote.

For example, a couple of days after I signed up as a BlueHost affiliate, I got an email from my dedicated affiliate manager who not only shared several ready to use banners and landing pages to promote BlueHost but also offered a $10 increase in commission if I wrote a dedicated article about BlueHost on my site.

She also shared several examples of the best performing content formats that are most likely to drive sales for me.

SEMrush has an affiliate program that offers up to 40% recurring commissions per sale. They have a complete section in their affiliate dashboard where you can find dozens of banners, links, landing pages, and even downloadable eBooks that you can promote to drive leads and customers.

Relationship managers and promotional material can play a big role in your success as an affiliate marketer.

They’ll save your time and help you promote the right products at the right times.

So don’t underestimate their importance while choosing affiliate products.

07 – Product Return Rate

Product returns are among the most damaging things for eCommerce businesses. And it could hurt your commissions as well if you aren’t careful while choosing affiliate products.

According to a study, eCommerce sites have a return rate of around 30% as compared to 8.89% in bricks and mortar stores.

Source

On most affiliate marketing platforms, including Amazon Associates, your commission is either released after the product’s return period has ended or it is reversed in case a product is returned.

Either way, it hurts your overall profitability.

There’s no point promoting a product that offers really attractive commissions but has a 70% return rate. No matter how much you sell, the majority of your sales will be disqualified because of returns.

This is why you have to ensure that the product you’re promoting is high quality, meets the customer’s needs, and will be delivered the way it’s shown online so that there are no returns.

Because inaccurate product descriptions are among the top reasons why customers return products purchased online.

Source

But no matter what you do, there will be returns and you have to include it in your overall calculations when choosing a product.

The problem for affiliates is that no affiliate platform tells you the return rate of individual products.

However, different studies have found the product categories with the highest percentage of returns.

Source

These are some of the most popular affiliate marketing niches. You can’t completely abandon those categories, of course, but you still need to be careful while choosing products from them.

You have to use your own research and experience while choosing products and then keep an eye on their return rates.

If the return rates are higher than usual, replace the product with a better alternative.

Also, check the product return policy of the affiliate program to see how it impacts your commissions. In some affiliate programs, the return duration is different for customers and affiliates so checking the policy before committing to a product will help you avoid problems in the future.

08 – Commission Payout Terms

Is there anything more infuriating than not getting paid on time for your hard work?

Well, it can happen to you if you don’t carefully read the payout terms before promoting an affiliate product.

For example, I’ve seen affiliate programs where the payouts are made quarterly (every three months!). You have to wait for three months to get paid for your hard work. Not ideal.

Amazon Associates has a 60 day payout period excluding the month in which you make the sale.

Most web hosting affiliate programs also have a payout duration of around 45-60 days.

In general, 30 days is the minimum payout period you’ll see with almost any reputable affiliate program because it allows them to handle returns and other administrative issues.

Another important factor is the minimum payout amount.

You don’t want to sign up for an affiliate program that allows payments only when your commission amount reaches $1000, especially if you’re promoting low priced products that pay only $5-10 in commission per sale.

And the most important thing to check before signing up for an affiliate program is whether it offers payment methods that you can easily access.

For example, if an affiliate program only supports Stripe payments, you need to make sure it works in your region. Or if you’ve had your PayPal account disabled and it’s the only mode an affiliate program supports.

It can be frustrating to see your money locked with a merchant just because you don’t have access to the right payment services.

09 – Product Sales Funnel Structure

What does the buyer’s journey for your affiliate product look like?

What are the steps that users go through from clicking your affiliate link to purchasing the product?

Is there a sales funnel? What does it look like?

Are there upsells or downsells in the funnel? Do you get rewarded for the additional products a referral purchases in the same session?

These are crucial questions to consider before choosing an affiliate product because it can have a massive impact on your sales numbers and ultimately the commissions you earn.

You can refer a thousand people to a product’s site but if it has a broken funnel, they won’t convert into customers and you won’t make any money.

In SaaS products, you’ll mostly be sending people to the product’s landing page where it either converts them into email subscribers or free trial users.

In this scenario, what is the cookie period? How do you get credit for a sale if a referral converts into an email subscriber but delays the purchase by a month?

There’s no point sending traffic to a product that signs up visitors to its email list with only a 48 hour cookie period.

Then you have Amazon Associates, the biggest retail affiliate program in the world.

Affiliates usually send traffic directly to Amazon’s product pages. If a customer purchases within Amazon’s 24 hour cookie period, you get credited for the purchase.

But that’s not all.

You also get paid for any additional products that your referral purchases in that period. This is one of the things that makes Amazon an attractive option for affiliate marketers.

You can promote a low priced product from Amazon but if people generally purchase more products with it in the same session, your average revenue per customer would be a lot higher.

In short, before deciding to promote a product, do experience the complete buyer’s journey to understand how likely a referral is to purchase the product once you refer them.

10 – Referral To Customer Conversion Rate

The conversion rate shows the percentage of your referrals who take the next step after clicking your affiliate link and convert into customers.

A low referral to customer conversion rate means your hard work is going to waste because you’re sending referrals to the affiliate product’s page but they’re not buying it.

According to a recent study by Adobe, the average eCommerce conversion rate is around 3%. Gifts, Pharmacy, and Apparel have the highest conversion rates while Consumer Electronics has the lowest.

Source

Now compare this to the average conversion rate on Amazon which is around 13% for normal users and a whopping 74% for Amazon Prime members.

This means that for every 100 visitors you send to Amazon at least 13 of them convert into customers. But this number is usually higher because there are more than 112 million Amazon Prime members in the US alone.

This is one of the reasons why Amazon affiliate sites are still so popular.

The commission rates might be lower, but whatever traffic you send to Amazon converts at a much higher rate than most other eCommerce sites.

There can be several reasons for a low referral-to-customer conversion rate.

It could happen because of a poorly designed or optimized landing page. This is completely out of your control. However, you can view a product’s landing page before deciding to promote it.

Another reason could be a poorly designed product funnel that doesn’t convert leads into customers. Again, not in your control.

Thirdly, low conversions could happen because of over-hyped and inaccurate affiliate content which makes false promises. But when the product’s original landing page tells them the true story, they bounce back.

This is certainly in your control and something you should be doing anyway.

Since you can’t measure conversions without promoting and running affiliate campaigns yourself, you’ll have to carefully review a product’s landing page and check-out page before fully committing to it.

If everything looks good, start promoting the product but also calculate the actual conversion rate so that you can measure it against the industry average and decide if you should continue promoting it.

11 – Cost Per Conversion

Your end goal as an affiliate marketer is to make a profit by promoting the right products to your audience.

To calculate profits, you need to know the costs that go into acquiring and converting leads into customers.

Earning $10K per month is no good if you have to spend 12K in acquiring the traffic to drive leads.

What are the lead acquisition costs you need to consider?

There are fixed costs such as web hosting, domain, and website infrastructure and maintenance.

Then you have direct costs like content creation, advertising, email marketing, SEO tools, etc. You have to take all of this into account when calculating conversion costs.

A simplistic way to calculate this cost is by dividing the total direct expense of an affiliate campaign by the number of leads generated from it.

For example, if you’re running a Facebook Ad campaign to drive leads, you can measure the costs by dividing the total amount spent on ads divided by the number leads that are converted into customers.

Similarly, if you’re driving sales through product review on your blog, you’ll divide the content writing cost with the number of customers it drives over a certain period.

Here are the average customer acquisition costs for different B2B marketing channels.

Source

Ignore the ones that do not apply to online marketing. But as you can see, even generating leads through SEO costs $31 per lead.

But this still gives you an incomplete picture.

Your overall profitability will be determined by how much you’re earning against the total costs of your affiliate campaigns.

Knowing the exact cost per lead allows you to determine whether you should promote a product or not. If there’s no way to lower the advertising/content creation costs to make your campaigns profitable, it’s better to switch to higher-priced products with better profit margins after your fixed+campaign specific costs are considered.

12 – Approved Traffic Channels And Marketing Strategies

No matter what affiliate program you sign up for, you’ll need to drive traffic to your links to generate clicks and earn commissions.

According to a study by Statista, here are the most popular traffic sources affiliate marketers use to drive sales.

Source

However, you can’t use all of these traffic sources for every affiliate product.

Most affiliate programs have very specific instructions about the channels you can use to send traffic to your affiliate links.

If you violate their terms, you won’t be credited for any sales and your affiliate account can be suspended as well.

For example, Amazon Associates does not allow affiliates to use product links in email marketing. You can send traffic to the affiliate content on your site, but you cannot directly use Amazon product links in emails.

Similarly, many leading affiliate programs do not allow traffic from Facebook advertising campaigns or even organic social media posts.

You have to take this into account while choosing an affiliate product and see whether it aligns with your primary marketing strategies.

For example, if you have a large email list in the weight loss niche and want to promote relevant products from Amazon to your subscribers, the only way to do it is to create a blog or social media post with your affiliate links.

You can’t directly use Amazon links in emails.

You can, however, find high-quality products from CJ, ClickBank, JVZoo, or any other affiliate network that allows email traffic and directly promote products to your subscribers.

Similarly, if you have a large Facebook group in a niche and want to promote affiliate products to it, make sure it allows social media traffic before signing up for the affiliate program.

The other thing to consider, of course, is the cost of traffic generation. We have already discussed this in the previous point.

But if you choose a product that only allows a specific traffic channel, calculate the cost of acquiring traffic from it before signing up as an affiliate.

It’s always better to promote products that align with your existing audience and traffic sources instead of signing up for an affiliate program that requires you to build a traffic source from scratch.

13 – Approved Countries/Regions

There are a couple of angles to this particular point.

Firstly, most of the leading affiliate programs have a list of approved countries/regions from where they recruit affiliates.

If you’re in the US you don’t need to worry because every affiliate program wants American affiliates.

But if you’re in any other country, make sure your country is in the list of approved regions before applying.

The second issue is even more important.

Affiliate programs want to recruit affiliates who’re popular in the countries/regions from where they want to drive sales.

For example, you might be an American blogger or social media influencer but if the audience of your blog is mainly coming from India or Bangladesh, many affiliate programs might not be interested in recruiting you as an affiliate because they are looking for traffic from the US.

Even if you get approved for a program and drive traffic to a product’s affiliate page, it’ll be frustrating to find out that your referred sales were disqualified because your traffic came from the wrong countries.

This is a pretty common issue that even Amazon affiliate sites face.

In case you didn’t know, you have to sign up for the Amazon Associates program separately for all the countries where the program is offered.

If you’re registered as an affiliate only in the US and drive sales from the UK, Australia, or Canada, you won’t earn any commissions.

Therefore, make sure the product you’re planning to promote aligns with your target audience.

Are You Ready To Be A Profitable Affiliate Marketer?

Affiliate marketing has no entry barrier which is why it is the most popular way to make money online.

However, to become a successful affiliate marketer you need to understand the key factors and KPIs that can have a long-term impact on your profitability.

The list I’ve shared in this post should give you a pretty good idea about the things you should consider before signing up for an affiliate program.

You can’t promote an affiliate product just because it offers an attractive commission rate or is popular among your competitors.

Think about all the points I’ve shared and make sure the product is going to be profitable in the long-run.

Trust me, just by knowing these points you’re already ahead of most affiliate marketers who can’t see anything beyond product commissions.

Now, you only need to put this into action.

How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing In A Seasonal Niche

Every expert tells you to choose an evergreen niche for your affiliate marketing business.

Makes sense.

You don’t want to be making money only for a few days or weeks a year, which is what happens if you choose a seasonal niche, right?

Well, it’s not as bad as you think.

Some seasonal businesses make more money in a few weeks (or months) than many evergreen sites make in a year.

Many of the experts who advocate sticking to evergreen niches only, silently make a LOT of money from affiliate sites in seasonal niches every year.

Don’t get me wrong.

Targeting evergreen niches is still the best way to go.

But that doesn’t mean you should entirely ignore seasonal niches.

In this detailed guide, I’ll tell you exactly what a seasonal niche is, how to find a profitable seasonal niche, and the different types of seasonal niche sites you can build (plus a lot of examples).

Let’s dive in.

What Is A Seasonal Niche?

As the name suggests, a seasonal niche is a niche that comes to life and attracts customers in a specific season for a short period.

Unlike evergreen niches where you can make money throughout the year, seasonal niches are profitable only for a few days, weeks, or months in a year (sometimes once in several years)

Christmas gifts, new year quotes & resolutions, Chinese New Year, winter clothing, boating, Fifa World Cup, Halloween, Diwali, or Eid-related products, etc. are all examples of seasonal niches.

As you can imagine, the businesses that completely rely on a seasonal niche can experience some extreme ups and downs in demand.

For example, look at the search trend for the boating niche, which is a seasonal niche, in Google Trends.

Now compare this with an evergreen niche like dating.

See the difference?

While the interest for boating spikes only for a few weeks every year, dating generates consistent interest throughout the year.

However, the search trend spikes that you see in seasonal niches can potentially earn you hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions if you adopt the right marketing strategy.

And this is what makes pursuing seasonal niches worth all the effort.

Evergreen vs. Seasonal Affiliate Sites – What’s The Right Approach?

It’s not really a question of choosing one over the other.

For a long-term business strategy, evergreen niches are always the right choice. But you can use seasonal hikes and trends to supplement your income.

Evergreen products and services have steady demand but seasonal products generate much more interest and sell faster in a short time.

Imagine if you can create affiliate sites targeting different seasonal trends, you can take advantage of these temporary spikes throughout the year.

And since there’s lesser competition in seasonal niches, you can dominate high traffic keywords in a much quicker time as compared to a competitive evergreen niche.

If you think long-term, you can take the benefit of seasonal trends with two different approaches.

Approach #1: Identify different seasonal trends and create dedicated sites about them. Publish high-quality content and target long-tail as well as high traffic head keywords to take advantage of the different trends throughout the year.

Plus, you can identify the popular trends in different countries and develop location-specific seasonal niche sites if there are profitable affiliate programs for your target region.

Approach #2: Create an evergreen affiliate site, build authority in your niche, and then take advantage of the different seasonal trends by publishing content about them.

With this approach, however, you will only be able to tap into the seasonal trends that align with your main niche.

I personally like the first approach because it allows you to explore any seasonal niches and experiment with different SEO and marketing techniques without risking your main evergreen niche site.

The Pros & Cons Of Choosing A Seasonal Niche In Affiliate Marketing

Before I go into more details of seasonal niche sites, let me share some of their main advantages and disadvantages so that you understand exactly what we’re getting into.

  • Seasonal niche sites are easier to create as compared to evergreen authority sites since you need lesser content and backlinks to rank because of lower competition.
  • Seasonal sites go viral easily because of increased public interest
  • You can make a lot of money in a few weeks with a seasonal site
  • If you own a seasonal niche site, you can take a break from work during the off-season
  • Even lower-priced products can pay you well because of volume sales during peak season
  • Creating independent seasonal niche sites allows you to tap into different trends without risking the authority of your main site
  • Multiple seasonal niche sites can collectively earn a handsome amount of money.
  • Seasonal sites have a very short earning span
  • Lots of low-quality sites target seasonal niches with grey-hat and black hat SEO which can work in the short term.
  • You need to begin working on a seasonal niche site well before the season arrives which means you’ll need to invest resources during the off-season when you’re first setting up the site without earning anything immediately.
  • You will find seasonal products to promote on Amazon but it’s harder to find such products in the digital product space.
  • Link building for seasonal sites is harder because the content isn’t always relevant for other blogs during the off-season

5 Different Types Of Seasonal Affiliate Sites You Can Create

Seasonal niche sites are not limited to the different climate conditions only. It’s a generic term used for any sites that target temporary or recurring trends that peak at a certain time.

There are so many different types of seasonal affiliate sites you can create but I’m listing down a few popular broad categories to give you an idea of what’s possible.

  • Affiliate Sites About Seasonal Products

This one’s obvious.

You can create a niche that targets a set of closely related problems that arise in certain seasons only.

For example, millions of people visit the beaches during the summers and purchase products like swimwear, watersport gadgets, swimming gear, etc.

You can create seasonal niche sites about any of the needs/problems that people commonly have during the summers.

For example, while professional surfers rule the sea waves throughout the year, the general public takes more interest in surfing during the summers. As a result, the sale of surfing products peaks on Amazon and other online stores between June and August every year.

This is when seasonal niche sites like Surfing Handbook ash in.

Source

As you can see from their disclaimer, they make money by promoting affiliate products from Amazon and other affiliate networks.

But there are other ways seasonal niche sites can make money as well.

For example, in the same surfing niche, Barefoot Surf Travel makes money by selling its surfing coaching program and premium online products.

Source

In winter, niche sites about skiing and snowboarding experience similar traffic spikes and make lots of money selling relevant products from Amazon and other retail sites.

Here’s an example.

Source

You can find these seasonal niches for spring, fall, and every other season.

The idea is to find the common season-specific problems/needs/passions/hobbies, create a dedicated site that offers valuable content about them, and make money by promoting relevant products as an affiliate.

Affiliate Sites About Specific Events And Holidays

Event-based seasonal niches are among the most profitable for affiliate marketers and can earn you thousands of dollars in just a few days.

Unlike the traditional seasonal niches, event-based niches have shorter lifespans and sometimes spike only once in 3-4 years.

Think of events like the Fifa World Cup that creates massive interest around the world every 3-4 years.

Look at its search trend graph in Google Trends.

Then you have religious and cultural events like Christmas, New Year, Diwali, Eid that spike once for a few days every year.

Can you see the spike in interest that these festivals generate every year?

Now, look at these when I compare them with the search trend on Christmas.

As you can see, the other two events are barely visible when it compares to the search spike during Christmas.

Imagine how much money is spent on Christma Trees, Santa Claus costumes, and all kinds of gift items every year.

You can have thousands of visitors on your site if you target high traffic events and optimize the site properly.

For example, here’s a screenshot from the Google Analytics account of a niche site that targets “WWE Summerslam” and gets a traffic spike every year when the event comes.

Look at the number of real-time visitors on the site.

Source

In just under 24 hours, the site made $1300+ with Google Ads and affiliate sales.

You can do the same for events such as Super Bowl, Oscars, WWE Wrestlemania, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.

And these are just some of the popular events that everyone knows about.

If you start looking for region-specific events & holidays, for example, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, or Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you’ll find dozens of ideas that you can target in your niche marketing strategy.

  • Affiliate Sites About A Product Trend

Websites about specific product or technology trends are great examples of seasonal niches sites.

For example, fidget spinners became a big deal just a couple of years ago and generated a lot of interest worldwide because experts believe they could help people focus better.

Look at the interest graph of fidget spinners during the second quarter of 2017.

As you can see it was a temporary trend but some sites made thousands of dollars selling them in just a few months (like these teens)

Source

They identified the trend early and took advantage.

The trend lasted just a few months and honestly, it’s pretty hard to cash in on such products.

But it is possible.

Perhaps a better example is Virtual Reality headsets.

The hype around VR has settled down a bit as compared to a few years ago, but there’s still plenty of demand and the product sees an uplift in trend every year around Christmas (probably because of the discounts).

But this is another angle you can use in seasonal niches.

  • Affiliate Sites About A Disease Or Political Development

Have you seen the interest the Black Lives Matter movement has generated all around the world and especially in countries with a history of slavery?

Or the impact the Occupy Wall Street campaign had a few years back?

These are global movements followed by millions of people and have immense potential in terms of affiliate marketing.

I’ve already seen dozens of sites capitalizing on the Black Lives Matter movement by publishing relevant content and promoting different Amazon products.

And what about COVID-19 which is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.

This high-school teen from Seattle made a coronavirus tracking site that started getting 30 million+ visitors per day.

Source

For some reason, he wasn’t in the mood to make money from it otherwise he would have earned millions in advertising and affiliate sales.

But it still validates the idea that you can create a site around a trend and make it hugely popular.

Plus, it seems he has understood the science of tapping into trending topics because he has created another site about Black Lives Matter protests that is similar to his previous site about COVID-19.

  • Affiliate Sites About Movies/Celebrities

Here’s a really popular seasonal niche angle that thousands of marketers have used to make money.

You’ll find fan sites about Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, Friends, and other popular shows and movies.

Such sites target movie launches and publish content around fan theories, updates, release dates, cast news, etc. to take advantage of the public interest.

They make money selling merchandise and promoting affiliate products from wherever they can find (mostly Amazon though).

Once the movie gets old it doesn’t attract the same kind of traffic but that’s what seasonal niches are all about, right?

I can share a lot of other angles and examples of how you can use seasonal trends to make money with affiliate marketing.

But I think you got the idea

Let me now tell you how you can find profitable seasonal niches.

How To Find Profitable Seasonal Niches For Affiliate Marketing

Finding profitable seasonal niches is slightly different from evergreen topics.

The methods and tools are the same but you’ll need a change of mindset and focus on the more short-term product trends.

Let’s discuss some of the methods in detail.

01 – Look At Your Surroundings For Inspiration

If you look around, you’ll find lots of different seasonal products in your house, in the shops you visit, the shows you watch, the games you play, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and the places you visit.

You only need to think about them from an affiliate marketing perspective and determine whether they’ll sell or not.

For example, beach volleyball is a mandatory summer sport for me and my cousins when we go to the beach together every year.

There are millions like us who love the sport and enjoy it in the second and third quarters of the year.

Going by its popularity, beach volleyball could be a really profitable seasonal niche in which you can make money by promoting products like volleyballs, nets, apparel, sunscreen, and many other related products.

This niche site already seems to be taking advantage.

Source

Gardening, another hugely popular seasonal niche, is my father’s favorite spare time activity.

Needless to say, it’s a huge niche with thousands of products you can promote.

According to Google Trends, it peaks during Mar-June every year when millions of people search for gardening tips, equipment, and related products that you can promote as an affiliate.

As I said, these niches are all around you.

So here’s what I suggest.

  • Get an app like Evernote or Google Keep on your smartphone
  • Note own your daily routine and the places you visit regularly
  • Evaluate everything you see from a seasonal affiliate marketing perspective. Ask yourself, will this product sell? What problem does it solve?
  • Don’t filter out anything at this stage and just note down anything interesting that you come across.
  • In just a few days, you’ll have a long list of different seasonal product ideas.

We’ll discuss how to evaluate these ideas later.

Another easy way to find a seasonal niche is to list down the most popular events and holidays in your target region.

For example, if you’re primarily targeting the US audience, just head over to Google and search for the list of public holidays in America.

As you know, different states in the US have their own holidays and events every year that you can target separately.

Do this for whatever region you’re targeting and you’ll immediately have a ton of different seasonal niches you can target.

Another example.

Here’s what I found when I searched for the most-watched TV programs in 2019 in the US.

Source

Super Bowl is always the biggest event of the year and brands even come up with dedicated advertising campaigns for it because of the interest it generates.

There’s immense interest around Super Bowl and you might find it hard to compete with the other sites since there’s so much competition for it.

But there are other events from this list that you can target, especially if you target the right long-tail keywords, you can cash in big time.

Here’s another angle, we’re in 2020 so let’s search for the top movies to be released in 2021.

Not every movie generates the same interest. Most movies don’t do well.

However, there are always some potential heavy cast blockbusters that you can target with a small niche site.

Want more ideas?

Search for the most popular hobbies in a particular season.

Here’s one of the first articles that came up.

Source

55 winter hobbies are enough to keep you busy if you’re looking for a seasonal niche.

But here’s another search result I found while looking for popular hobbies.

The chart below shows the most popular outdoor activities in the US from 2009-2018

Source

In short, just searching for the top events, movies, and political or sporting events around you can help you come up with lots of seasonal niche ideas.

03 – Find Innovative Seasonal Product Ideas From AliExpress

If you haven’t explored AliExpress yet, you’re in for a huge surprise.

Owned by AlibabaGroup, AliExpress is one of the world’s biggest B2C and B2B eCommerce portals in the world.

It has its own events and annual sales (similar to Prime Day and Thanksgiving sales) in which products worth billions of dollars are sold in just a few hours.

Just look at the scale of its Single’s Day sales when compared with Thanksgiving

Source

There are multiple ways you can use AliExpress to find seasonal niche ideas.

  • Explore Product Categories

There are so many different products listed on this site that just browsing through its product categories and subcategories can give you tons of ideas.

Watch me dig through its product categories to find ideas.

As you can see, the homepage has several broad categories. Let’s explore “Outdoor Fun & Sports”.

Look at the number of subcategories in this section.

Some of them are seasonal while the others are evergreen.

Let’s explore Water Sports since we’re more likely to have seasonal niches in this section.

Now we’re talking.

Before getting to this section I only had a couple of water sports in mind but just looking at the list of subcategories in this section has given me more ideas.

Let’s explore Surfing & Diving.

Do you see all the different product categories listed in this section?

Suppose you create a niche site about surfing & diving which is a seasonal topic. Each product listed in this section solves a different problem that people interested in surfing & diving commonly face.

You can create content that addresses the problems these products solve and pitch them in the content body.

We’ve only explored one category.

Imagine the number of ideas you can generate if you spend a few hours on this site.

In the screenshot above, note the section I’ve highlighted with an arrow.

This section shows you the price range that’s attracting the most buyers. It’s a really good indicator of the products that are selling frequently and can potentially make you a lot of money f you decide to promote them.

AliExpress is home to thousands of innovative and unique products that you won’t find on other retail websites.

Many of those products are used for seasonal needs and can help you come up with unique niche site ideas.

You can find them in the “Top Ranking” section on the homepage of AliExpress.

The products on this page are distributed into relevant categories which makes it easier to explore niche-specific seasonal products.

Again, you’ll need to explore these categories to find seasonal products that have the potential to make you a decent affiliate income.

But just the sheer volume and variety of products you can find on AliExpress opens your mind to unique niche ideas.

You already know about Amazon so I won’t go into a lot of detail here.

Most of the products you’ll find on AliExpress are sold on Amazon as well.

This is because a large number of American sellers source products from China and sell them for much higher prices on Amazon.

Well, good for you because higher-priced products offer higher commissions.

The product category structure on Amazon is different from AliExpress which is why it’s worth exploring separately.

In fact, it’s much better from a niche research perspective because the sub-categories aren’t just product names like in AliExpress. Instead, they’re broad product categories that are grouped together based on the problems they solve.

Let’s explore the Sports & Outdoor category this time.

There are a number of categories on this page but if you look at the first three that I’ve highlighted, they’re all pretty seasonal topics.

Hiking, for example, usually peaks between May and August.

Similarly, cycling is also a seasonal topic that you can explore further to see if there’s affiliate marketing potential in it.

The other way to find niche ideas on Amazon is by looking at the best-selling products in different categories.

Just go to any product category and sort the products by “Featured” using the dropdown menu on the right of your screen.

If you do this in every category separately, you’ll get a sense of what’s popular these days and what products can be more profitable if you promote them as an affiliate.

Google Trends is your best friend when it comes to evaluating the seasonality of different niches.

It’s an information goldmine where you can evaluate the search trends of different topics and also discover new and hidden topics that have high seasonal demand.

For example, we just saw cycling as one of the categories in Amazon.

Let’s analyze its search trend in Google Trends.

As you can see, I’ve selected the United States as my target region and “2004-present” as the duration of my search.

The chart clearly shows that the searches for cycling peak during the summers every year.

This means May to August is a great time to sell cycling-related products every year as an affiliate.

But that’s not all.

If you scroll down, Google tells you exactly what subregions have the highest interest in your topic.

For example, most searches for cycling are coming from Colorado and Vermont.

If you click on Colorado or any other subregion, you’ll get the specific search trend for cycling in those areas.

Now scroll down even more and Google will give you lists of the related topics and search queries that people are using to look for cycling on Google Search.

Make sure the lists are sorted by Rising, as shown in the screenshot below.

This tells you exactly what angle you should adopt while creating content about a topic on your niche site.

If you click on any of the Related Topics, Google will show you its search trend and related queries/topics separately.

This way you can uncover countless new topics, check their seasonal demand, and find the angles that people are looking for.

But there’s more.

If you scroll to the bottom of the homepage of Google Trends, you’ll see this section.

It lists the links to the top search trends in the last 5 years.

If you analyze the top trends of each year separately, you’ll find that certain trends feature every year.

Click on those trends to see their seasonal demand in the last five years and you’ll uncover many more local trends that are otherwise hard to find.

06 – Evaluate Searches From The Previous Years Using SEO Tools

Once you identify a few potential seasonal niches for your affiliate site, it’s time to evaluate their search volume.

One technique that I’ve found really useful in identifying seasonal keywords is using the current year at the end of the keyword.

For example, if you search for the keyword “best hiking shoes”, Ahrefs shows a search volume of around 20K/month for it.

But let’s see what happens when we add the year 2019 to it.

As you can see, the search volume is much lower, only 1.3K/month, but it’s still a good keyword to rank for because when people search for seasonal products, they often mention the year as well to get the latest product offers.

If you check the search volume for “best hiking shoes 2020” you’ll find similar stats because there’s a demand for search keywords every year.

If you’re creating a site about hiking in the second half of 2020, you should ideally look to optimize your content for 2021 keywords.

Because, as the trend shows, the keyword “best hiking shoes 2021” will get a lot of searches as well.

Do this for any niche you’re targeting so that you can get an idea of the search volume of its main keywords.

Here’s another technique.

Search for your main topic keyword, find any top seasonal site in your target niche from Google Search results, and copy its URL.

Now head over to the Google Keyword Planner tool–>Keyword Ideas and enter the URL you copied.

Google Keyword Planner will give you a long list of search keywords based on the URL you enter.

You can use this list to brainstorm new ideas and shortlist keywords that you want to explore further for creating your content strategy.

Search for the shortlisted keywords in SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to get their exact search volumes and competition level.

07 – Identify The Best Monetization Methods For Your Seasonal Niche

The last step in finding a seasonal niche to check whether the niche you’ve selected can be monetized or not.

The easiest way of doing this is to search for relevant products on Amazon.

For example, if your niche is “hiking”, find the top hiking products selling on Amazon, check their reviews and ratings to get a sense of how frequently people buy them.

Also, don’t forget to check the commission percentage Amazon is offering for your niche because that will have a huge impact on your earnings.

You can find the updated commission structure of Amazon Associates on this link.

But Amazon Associates is not the only affiliate program in the world.

Plus, you might be targeting a region or seasonal trend in a country where Amazon Associates does not work

This is why we’ve listed dozens of high-paying affiliate programs other than Amazon where you can find relevant products for your niche site.

Apart from affiliate marketing networks, you can also check for direct partnership opportunities with the local businesses in your target region while evaluating a niche.

Plus, keep an eye on other monetization methods like advertising, product sales, membership sites, coaching programs, etc. so that you know exactly how to make money from your site.

5 Examples Of Successful Affiliate Sites In Seasonal Niches

01 – A Way To Garden

Domain Authority (DA)

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Monetization Method

56

93K

570K+

Amazon Associates, Product Sales, Membership, Advertising

A Way To Garden is one of the best examples of a successful seasonal niche site with immense authority in its industry.

According to SimilarWeb, the site gets around 90K+ visitors per month on average. However, its traffic peaks during High-quality Jun, July, and August which is understandable since gardening is a popular summer hobby for many Americans.

The site makes most of its money from Amazon Associates, advertising, and its own products.

What makes it so successful?

High-quality content, very detailed product reviews, and a special focus on community building which is why they have thousands of email subscribers and almost 100K followers on Facebook.

It’s an example to emulate for other marketers.

02 – Bear Foot Theory

Domain Authority (DA)

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Monetization Method

51

300K+

6.9K

Amazon Associates, Product Sales, Membership, Advertising

Bear Foot Theory is another brilliant example of how a seasonal site can gain authority, build a community around it, and turn into a hugely successful online business.

The site gets around 150-200K visitors per month but its traffic peaks during the summers and reaches the 350-400K range.

Its primary income source is Amazon Associates but it also publishes sponsored content (along with a few other services).

Just like the previous site, Bear Foot Theory has A-class content that has helped them build a pretty impressive email subscriber base and social media presence in the last few years.

03 – NorthPole

Domain Authority (DA)

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Monetization Method

57

30K

350K+

Amazon Associates, Walmart, Product Sales, Advertising

NorthPole is a classic example of a seasonal niche site.

It looks old and has an ugly design, but still gets tons of traffic during the Christmas season every year.

What is it about?

Everything about Christmas and Santa.

From games and activities to recipes and articles about Christmas, you’ll find everything on this site.

SimilarWeb doesn’t have any traffic numbers for this site probably because it gets all of its traffic during the last quarter of the year. But looking at its domain authority and using the estimates from Ubersuggest, it gets around 30K/month visitors on average. I’m sure it’s a lot higher during the Christmas season.

What’s the reason for their success?

It’s a very old and established site and probably gets most of its traffic through referrals and word of mouth. Plus, it has an impressive range of Christmas products and activities that surely attract visitors.

I think it can get a LOT more traffic if they improve the site’s design and publish better quality content regularly.

04 – Westeros

Domain Authority (DA)

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Monetization Method

76

1.2 Million

NA

Amazon Associates, Google Adsense

Westeros is a hugely popular fan site about Game Of Thrones (GoT) and the other works of George R.R Martin.

It gets millions of visitors per month because Game Of Thrones has such a huge audience around the world.

However, it’s still a seasonal site.

Its traffic numbers skyrocketed during each season of Game Of Thrones (GoT) but as soon as a season ended, the traffic dipped as well.

I don’t know who owns this site but whoever does, must be making a lot of money because the site has Google Adsense enabled plus several Amazon products are also promoted on the site.

What’s the reason for the site’s success?

Tapping into a popular online trend at the right time.

Plus, it has a very lively forum where you can read all kinds of fan theories and the latest news about Game Of Thrones and the future works of George R.R. Martin.

05 – The Pool Advisors

Domain Authority (DA)

Estimated Monthly Traffic

Total Backlinks

Monetization Method

24

25K+

236

Amazon Associates

This is not the most popular or high traffic site in this list but it’s probably the best example for anyone starting in a seasonal niche.

The Pool Advisors get reasonable traffic throughout the year but their main selling months are from May to August because of summers.

The site makes all of its income by promoting different swimming pool products from Amazon.

The success of the site is built upon its impressive content marketing strategy.

Like any other affiliate site, it has lots of product reviews (very detailed) but it also has a large number of informational articles that answer the biggest questions of its audience.

The site’s design is also quite modern and overall the blog looks like a project by an experienced affiliate marketer.

Tips For Making Money With Seasonal Niche Sites

There’s nothing wrong with targeting the mainstream events like New Year, Christmas or other popular seasonal topics.

But you’ll have a better chance of ranking for New Year in Australia or New Year in Dubai than just “New Year”.

Similarly, you’ll have a better chance of getting traffic for the lesser-known local events or seasonal trends as compared to the popular topics everyone already knows about.

  • Start Working At Least 6 Months In Advance

If you want your site to rank for all the right seasonal keywords, make sure you start working on it at least 6 months ahead of time.

Publish great content, identify the most popular topics within the niche, and try to cover as many bases as possible when you’re first setting up your site.

  • Target Long-Tail Keywords

Ignore the high traffic head keywords in your niche SEO strategy. Instead, publish long-form content that targets multiple mid-low traffic long-tail keywords.

In particular, target year-specific keywords like “best hiking shoes 2021” to get better results.

  • Refresh Your Content Before Every Season

This is very important.

Content freshness is one of the key Google ranking factors which is why you need to start refreshing your content every year before your niche’s season arrives.

Refreshing your content means adding updated statistics, new images, updating the year you’ve targeted in your SEO strategy, and in general making the content more relevant.

  • Build A Vibrant Community Around Your Site

Building an email list and social media following is crucial for all types of online businesses.

But for seasonal niche sites, it can be a gamechanger.

If you have a large email list or social media following, you can keep them engaged throughout the year, build momentum to your site as the season gets nearer and drive more traffic to your content.

Plus, you won’t be completely dependent on search engine traffic as most seasonal niche sites are.

Will You Launch An Affiliate Site In A Seasonal Niche?

Not everyone likes the idea of putting so much work into a site and then making money for only a few weeks in a year.

But as I’ve shown you, there are examples of sites that are making a lot of money in a very short time by targeting profitable seasonal niches that other marketers are ignoring.

It’s a question of your preferences.

In my opinion, seasonal niche sites offer an exciting opportunity to test your affiliate marketing skills and make money off trending topics.

I would want you to give it a try.

Let me know if you have any questions about this topic

SendGrid Review: Reliable Email Marketing Software for Digital & Affiliate Marketers

If you’re wondering whether SendGrid is the right email marketing software for your business, you’ve come to the right place.

SendGrid has been around for a long time, much longer than some of the newer email marketing tools, but you still don’t hear about it from the leading bloggers, marketers, and even product review sites.

Why?

Is it a sub-standard product?

Is it not designed for mainstream marketers?

Or does it simply not offer an attractive affiliate commission rate because of which no one writes about?

This SendGrid review has all the answers (plus a lot more)

I’ll tell you exactly what SendGrid is, how it’s different from other email marketing tools like GetResponse or Mailchimp, and most importantly if it’s worth spending your money on.

What is SendGrid? Review & Product Details

SendGrid is a leading email marketing company that specializes in transactional emails and prides itself on its email deliverability rates and security.

Founded in 2009, SendGrid currently has more than 80,000 users and is one of the most well-known email marketing service providers, especially for B2B companies.

In 2019, it was acquired by Twilio, a leading cloud communications company, for $2 billion. Since then Twilio SendGrid has added several new features to its platform in a bid to expand its user base.

However, SendGrid has a different target audience when compared with services like GetResponse, MailChimp, or ActiveCampaign.

Its primary USP is the email deliverability of transactional emails for large enterprises that need a reliable email service for mass email campaigns.

What Are Transactional Emails?

When you sign-up for a service like Facebook, Twitter, Uber or any other online business, you receive automatic sign-up notifications.

Similarly, when you make changes to your profile on a social network it sends you automated update notifications.

Or when you receive payments in PayPal (or when your account gets suspended) you get automated  “no-reply” emails to your inbox.

All of these are examples of transactional emails.

Transactional emails are routine notification emails or emails that are sent to facilitate an agreed-upon service that you’ve signed up for online.

Large companies Uber, Airbnb, etc. with millions of registered users send several hundred million transactional emails per month.

SendGrid specializes in making sure your emails reach the customers’ email inbox instead of their junk folders.

Plus they provide much deeper email analytics than most other email marketing services which allows their clients to calculate their email marketing ROI and develop optimization strategies much more effectively.

From the outside, this seems like a simple service.

In reality, though, it saves billions of dollars in annual engineering costs, marketing expenses, and customer service costs.

Is SendGrid Not Designed For Small Businesses And Bloggers?

SendGrid is renowned for the deliverability rates of its transactional emails.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not designed for small businesses, bloggers, and marketers.

It offers all the basic email marketing functions that any small business or beginner online marketer needs.

It even has several automation features and testing capabilities.

Plus, it is one of the few email marketing services that offer a free plan.

Its pricing plans are also quite reasonable as compared to the other services in the email industry.

Let’s take a closer look.

SendGrid Pricing & Free Plan | Is SendGrid Free?

SendGrid’s pricing structure is based on the size of your subscriber base and the number of emails you send them every month.

Let’s have a look at the pricing plans before digging further.

As you can see, the Basic plan costs you $15/month for up to 1000 subscribers 15000 monthly email limit. You also get A/B testing features with 10 testing credits, 5 sign up forms, 1 team account, and ticket & chat support.

The Advanced plan costs $60/month for 5000 and a monthly email limit of 25000. Plus you get basic automation features, a dedicated IP, and 1000 team accounts in addition to all the other features of the Basic plan.

SendGrid also offers a Free plan in which you can store up to 2000 subscribers with a monthly email limit of 6000. It comes with basic automation features, 1 sign up form, and 3 email testing credits along with the other standard email marketing features like email builder, segmentation, and email templates.

When I compare the three plans, the Free plan is definitely an attractive choice for bloggers, small businesses, or anyone who’s looking for a free solution.

The Basic and Advanced plans, however, are a bit of a mixed bag.

There are no automation features in the Basic plan which is quite strange considering that SendGrid doesn’t offer advanced automation anyway.

The Advanced plan, on the other hand, offers much more than a small business needs.

However, their sending limits and subscriber counts are quite reasonable for both plans and should encourage users to sign up if they’re looking for reliability over advanced automation features.

Both the paid plans come with a Free Trial (no credit card needed).

So they’ve definitely opened a window for those who want to experience SendGrid and see if its the right fit for their business.

SendGrid Pros & Cons, Strengths & Weaknesses

SendGrid has many strengths but it also has its share of weaknesses and disadvantages depending on your business priorities.

Let’s have a quick look at its pros and cons.

  • Among the best email deliverability rates in the email marketing industry
  • Reliable server uptime and server load management
  • A very good free plan for small businesses and users with budget limitations
  • Attractive and mobile responsive email templates
  • A/B testing for single email campaigns
  • In-depth email campaign statistics broken down up to individual subscriber level
  • Ideal for organizations looking for reliable transactional email deliverability
  • Multiple indicators to help you assess your list reputation which directly impacts deliverability
  • Beginner-friendly pricing plans
  • Very limited automation capabilities which means there are no website event-based email triggers, or advanced If-Then automation workflows.
  • A/B testing not available for drip campaigns
  • No automation features in the Basic Plan
  • No tags for contact management

I – Manage Your Contacts With Lists, Segments and Custom Fields

In SendGrid, contact lists, segments, and custom fields are the primary ways to manage your subscribers.

Unlike some of the other email marketing tools, SendGrid does not support tags for now.

But the overall contact management is still pretty impressive.

You can create multiple lists originating from different sources like landing pages and sign up forms. Plus you can make use of custom fields to gather additional information about your subscribers.

To add contacts to your list, you can either manually enter email addresses, paste contact from another file, or upload a CSV file to your SendGrid account.

With CSV files, you’ll also need to manually map your contacts with the right fields. In case a field doesn’t exist, you can either skip importing it or create a custom field.

Once you submit a CSV file, it takes a few minutes to complete the import process and sends you an email alert after it’s completed.

The segmentation features are also quite impressive using which you can create segments based on all the fields in your subscriber database as well as their activity and engagement with your email campaigns.

For example, here are the conditions based on which I created a segment in SendGrid.

You can create multiple segments within an email list to design more personalized and targeted email campaigns.

You can view the detailed information about a subscriber on the individual contact page. You can also add custom fields to this list.

Overall, the list management features of SendGrid are quite good except for the fact that there are no tags (something I really miss).

But it still gives you enough tools to efficiently manage your subscribers and maintain a healthy email list.

II – Convert Subscribers With Customizable Sign-Up Forms

To build your email list the right way, you need to create opt-in forms on your site where your visitors can willingly sign up to your email list.

With SendGrid, you can create fully customizable signup forms that can be embedded anywhere on your site and landing pages.

If you’re using forms on your blog, the best placements are in the header, at the end of blog posts, and in the sidebar.

The form builder gives you all the basic options for building an email signup form along with several customization options to make your form look exactly the way you want.

However, there are no pop-ups, sliders, or exit intent signup forms available in SendGrid.

If you want to use additional fields (other than Name and Email) in the signup form you’ll need to create custom fields before creating a form. New fields cannot be created in the form builder.

Every signup form is associated with a list or a segment and can also be used as a part of an automation sequence. For example, you can set up an automation in which a series of emails is triggered as soon as a subscriber joins an email list segment through a particular form on your site.

SendGrid Free plan users can create only one signup form, while the users of Basic and Advanced plans can create 5 and 15 signup forms respectively.

III – Never Worry About Email Deliverability Rate Again

There’s no point in investing thousands of dollars in email marketing if your emails never make it to your subscriber’s email inbox.

This is where SendGrid and email deliverability come in.

Email deliverability is simply the percentage of emails that land right in your recipient’s inbox instead of their spam or junk folders.

With an excellent deliverability rate of 95%+ for mass email campaigns, deliverability is the strongest suit and the main USP of SendGrid.

For a company with over 80K customers who send more than 60 billion emails per month, that’s a remarkable percentage of emails landing directly in user inboxes.

Email deliverability is largely determined by the sender’s reputation (in this case, you).

Email inbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. analyze the sender’s reputation before deciding whether an email goes to the recipient’s inbox or spam folder.

Sender reputation is largely determined by the following factors.

  • Recipient Engagement: what percentage of your emails are generally opened, clicked, responded, deleted, marked as spam etc.
  • Email Content: Is your content engaging, accessible on mobile, doesn’t have spam links, etc.
  • Spam Complaints: What percentage of your emails marked as spam by your recipients.
  • Invalid Email Addresses: The number of bounced emails sent to incorrect email addresses
  • Blacklists: How many times has your IP address or sending domain been blacklisted.
  • Domain Reputation: What’s the reputation of your sending domain? Do you link out to unreliable or spammy sites or do you promote dubious affiliate offers? All o this earns you a bad reputation and hurts your deliverability rate.

To give you an idea of your seder reputation, SendGrid shows a reputation score in your main dashboard that’s updated after every email sent from your account.

This percentage is based on your email for the last 30 days and is updated daily. Every new bounced email, spam report, or low engagement campaign impacts this score.

However, it’s only a reflection of your overall reputation and does not indicate the percentage of emails that are delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes.

There’s also plenty of help content available on the SendGrid blog and knowledge base to help you understand deliverability and how to improve it.

IV – Design Eye-Catching Email Campaigns With SendGrid Email Builder

SendGrid comes with two types of Email Builders – Design Editor and Code Editor.

Design Editor is a fully visual and modern email builder for marketers with drag & drop blocks and easy-to-use functionality.

Code Editor, on the other hand, is for advanced users who want to create rich HTML emails by direly playing the code.

The same email builders are used for both Single Send campaigns ad Automation sequences.

For marketers, the Design Editor is ideal so we’ll stick to it in this review.

Whether you’re creating a Single Send email campaign or an email for an automation sequence, creating emails in the design editor is pretty simple.

You first need to choose a design template. You can start with a blank template or use a ready-to-use responsive email template by SendGrid.

For now, only six templates are available.

Next, you’ll decide whether to create your email using the Design Editor or Code Editor. As I said, we’ll go with the first option.

Design Editor gives you plenty of options for designing emails and customizing the pre-designed SendGrid templates.

For example, here are the different building blocks you can drag & drop in the email builder while designing your content.

Other than these ready-to-use blocks, there are several customization options using which you can change template color combinations, width and padding of the content box, and font size/appearance, etc.

You can also use a number of different tags in your email to add more personalization to your messages.

This is really useful if you’re using custom fields for gathering additional information about your subscribers.

The more info you have, the more personalized messages you can create using these tags.

For Single Email Campaigns, you can also configure the Sender Name, Email Subject, Preview text, and other important settings.

You can send email campaigns to a whole list or a segment from one of your lists. Plus you also have the option to send emails immediately or schedule them for specific date & time.

Once you’re done with the settings, you can save and send test emails to make sure everything looks perfect.

Overall, the Design Editor gives you all the basic options you need to create an engaging email campaign. However, I’d love to see more drag & drop blocks added to it.

V – Use SendGrid Drip Campaigns And Automation To Engage Subscribers

SendGrid isn’t known for its automation features or complex drip campaigns.

However, it still offers basic automation capabilities using which you can create different automation workflows that are mainly triggered when someone either joins an email list or an audience segment.

You can access the automation section from your account dashboard. You can start with a pre-designed Welcome email sequence or create your own custom drip campaign.

The Welcome sequence comprises of a series of introductory emails sent daily to any new subscribers who join your list.

If you create a custom drip campaign, you can start by choosing entry criteria for your subscribers which is either when someone joins an email list or a segment.

In the screenshot above, the entry criterion is the first time a contact is added to a list.

Pretty basic stuff, I know. But that’s all it offers.

On the same page, you can design your drip campaign sequence, the frequency of emails, and their timeline.

For example, in the screenshot above, the first email of the drip campaign is sent as soon as a contact meets the automation criteria.

The next email is scheduled after a gap of three days and the one after that is scheduled two days after the second email.

You can add more emails to sequence and edit their timelines.

There’s no option to create If-Then drip campaigns which means you can’t create behaviorally targeted campaigns.

You can edit the subject, sender details, and email content of every email in a drip campaign from the automation workflow section.

When you click on the “Add Email Content” button it takes you to the email designer which I described in the previous point.

Overall, there’s nothing much to talk about SendGrid automation capabilities. It’s clearly not among their priorities which is why anyone looking for advanced automation features should stay away from it.

However, if you’re a small business owner or a blogger looking to create simple welcome email sequences or email courses sent on a fixed schedule, SendGrid will do the job for you.

VI – Optimize Email Campaigns With A/B Testing

A/B Testing or Split Testing, as it’s commonly known, is an important conversion optimization technique that can help you increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and increase ROI.

In SendGrid, you can A/B Test Single Email Campaigns only.

As of now, split testing is not available for automation sequences and opt-in forms.

You can A/B Test your emails in the email builder tool next to the “Tags” link.

Currently, the A/B Testing feature allows you to experiment with different email subject lines and email body content.

To set up a test, you can create multiple versions of your email subjects or body content, define a testing range, and set your winning criteria which either be on the basis of open rate or the click rate of your emails.

Although the split testing features in SendGrid are quite reasonable, not being able to test dip campaigns and opt-in forms is a bit of a letdown.

VII – Measure Performance With In-Depth Email Analytics

SendGrid analytics are among the best in the email marketing industry.

It gives you in-depth statistics about all aspects of your email subscribers and their engagement with your email campaigns.

Plus, the main analytics dashboard summarizes the key data metrics really well which makes it easy to analyze the overall health of your subscribe base and how they’re responding to your messages.

Have a look at the number of sub-sections under the Stats section in SendGrid. This gives you a fair idea of the detail in which you can view email marketing statistics with SendGrid.

With such detailed analytics, there are no blind spots in your email marketing strategy.

For example, you can view autoresponder statistics for your drip campaigns to find out which emails in your workflow are performing below par.

You can then dig even further to diagnose why their performance isn’t up to the mark and how you can improve it.

Similarly, you can identify the most profitable categories, pages, or locations for your business and invest most of your resources on them.

In short, SendGrid gives you a really impressive range of analytics features that are comparable to any other leading email marketing software.

Wrapping Up SendGrid Features

As you can see from the features I’ve described, SendGrid offers you a solid range of email marketing functionality.

It is particularly strong in the technical aspects of email marketing and is a reliable product for any marketer or organization that’s looking to deliver important emails on a regular basis.

However, for advanced marketers who’re looking for more flexible automation and testing capabilities, SendGrid still has a lot to cover.

SendGrid Integrations | Getting More Out Of SendGrid

SendGrid can be integrated with a wide range of third-party apps and products to increase its utility and improve functionality.

Let’s quickly analyze some of their main integrations.

a. SendGrid Integration With Website Platforms

SendGrid integrates with all the popular website platforms and content management systems (CMS) easily.

SendGrid Integration With WordPress

You can integrate SendGrid with WordPress by using the official SendGrid WordPress Plugin. To use the plugin, you need to enter your SendGrid API key that you can get from your account’s Settings tab.

Once the plugin is installed, you can use SendGrid sign-up forms for list building and several other email marketing features.

SendGrid Integration With Shopify

Shopify doesn’t directly integrate with SendGrid. However, you can easily integrate the two apps using Zapier. After integrating SendGrid with Shopify, you can send automated Welcome emails, deliver product notifications, thank you emails, and a lot more.

SendGrid Integration With Magento 2.0

If you have an eCommerce site on Magento, you can use SendGrid for email marketing and list building by integrating the two apps.

To integrate SendGrid with Magento 2.0, you need to add the SendGrid extension from Magneto Marketplace.

b. SendGrid Integration With Landing Page Builders

SendGrid does not have landing pages but it can be integrated with several popular landing page apps.

SendGrid Integration With LeadPages

LeadPages is a popular landing page app that can be integrated with SendGrid using Zapier. You’ll need your SendGrid API Key to complete the integration. Once the two apps are connected, you can use SendGrid opt-in forms on landing pages created with LeadPages to collect email subscribers.

SendGrid Integration With ClickFunnels

SendGrid can be integrated with ClickFunnels which will allow you to send emails using Actionetics (email marketing solution by ClickFunnels). Here’s the complete integration guide to help you

SendGrid Integration With Privy

Privy is a popular landing page application that directly integrates with SendGrid. Simply sign up to Privy, enter your SendGrid account details, and complete the integration. Here’s the step-by-step guide.

c. SendGrid Integration With Other Tools

SendGrid can be used with a wide range of other applications and software products.

SendGrid Integration With Google Analytics

You can enable Google Analytics tracking on your SendGrid email campaigns from the Settings–>Tracking Settings section.

SendGrid Integration With Salesforce


SendGrid Reviews, Feedback & Testimonials

As I’ve mentioned earlier, SendGrid’s main claim to fame is its ability to send mass transactional email campaigns with high deliverability rates.

This is why most of the online reviews and user feedback about SendGrid is focused on these two features. There’s very little feedback about its automation, analytics, and testing capabilities.

On G2 and Capterra SendGrid has average ratings of 4.3 and 4.0 respectively. However, most of it based on its enterprise features. If you take email marketing for small businesses into the equation, I’d give it a 3.9/5 rating.

Here are a few reviews from Capterra:

Overall:…SendGrid is a great solution if sending emails from your website is critical to your business. It gives you the functionality to inspect and see what emails are being sent and to secure your emails using various security standards (ie. SPF, DKIM, etc).

Pros: Often web hosts have email limits for websites and your contact forms or orders from your site can be shut off without warning. Using SendGrid means you can control your email services from your website and see what emails are being sent and whether they are being delivered. The SendGrid console allows you to view what emails are bouncing and which aren’t being delivered (ie. fake email addresses), etc. Also SendGrid support is really great as well and will assist with how to go about securing your email using Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) (or their similarly named solution of this).

Cons: With you could inspect the email bodies within the SendGrid console. Unfortunately, you can only search on the email subject, dates, etc, but not the email bodies.

SendGrid Alternatives – Other Email Marketing Software You Can Use

If you’re looking for other email marketing software you can use in place of SendGrid, there are several options you can try.

SendGrid vs. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is among the most popular email marketing services in the world and is a pretty good alternative to SendGrid. It offers a free plan, has far superior automation features, and a pretty good visual email builder.

However, SendGrid is a cheaper option plus it has better deliverability and analytics than Mailchimp.

SendGrid vs. Mailgun

If you’re looking for a reliable service for large-scale transactional email campaigns with a high deliverability rate, Mailgun is another very good option.

It is designed for developers and can be integrated with a wide range of third-party applications and software products.

However, instead of a free plan like SendGrid, it offers a free 3-month trial after which you’re charged for your campaigns.

SendGrid vs. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a solid and well-rounded email marketing service for businesses of all sizes. It has a rich feature set that includes landing pages, and several other conversion tools, in addition to the standard email marketing and large-scale campaign capabilities.

Its marketing automation features are also more advance as compared to SendGrid and its analytics and reporting section is also impressive.

Plus, it has a free plan which allows up to 300 emails per day.

However, SendGrid is still a more reliable option for large-scale transactional emails.

SendGrid Verdict – Is It The Right Email Marketing Software For You?

If you’re running a SaaS company that needs a reliable email marketing service with basic automation and world-class deliverability rates, SendGrid is the better option for you.

Its email builder is pretty useful, plus the automation features are good enough for basic drip campaigns.

However, if you’re a blogger or affiliate marketer who’s looking for more flexibility in terms of automation, testing, conversion tools and website event tracking, SendGrid leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s still a pretty good option for beginner bloggers and small businesses who don’t need advanced automation features and are more worried about email deliverability and the overall service costs.

If you can’t make up your mind, sign up for the free plan of SendGrid to experience the service standards and decide whether it’s the right tool for your business.

SendGrid Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is SendGrid?

SendGrid is an email marketing service that allows you to host email subscribers and send mass email campaigns without maintaining your own email servers or managing the technical issues related to email marketing.

Is SendGrid safe?

SendGrid is a completely safe service that’s renowned for its high-level security and technical email marketing expertise.

Is SendGrid free?

SendGrid has a Free Plan that allows you to store up to 2000 contacts and send up to 6000 emails per month.

Why should I use SendGrid?

SendGrid specializes in email deliverability which means your emails have a much higher chance of landing directly in your subscriber’s inbox instead of going to Spam or Junk folders.

What are transactional emails?

Transactional emails are sent to facilitate agreed-upon transactions/communication between the sender and the recipient. Emails for account sign-ups, password change, account notifications, product purchases, etc. are common examples of transactional emails.

Is SendGrid designed for bloggers and affiliate marketers?

Bloggers and affiliate marketers can use SendGrid for basic email marketing features. However, it is primarily designed for large enterprises with a special focus on transactional emails.

Does SendGrid offer landing pages?

No, SendGrid does not have its own landing pages but it does integrate with several leading landing page applications.

SendGrid vs. Mailchimp – Which one is better?

Both SendGrid and Mailchimp are powerful email marketing tools. However, Mailchimp is more suitable for small businesses and bloggers as compared to SendGrid because of its ease of use, automation, and overall email marketing features.

SendGrid vs. GetResponse – Which one is better?

SendGrid and GetResponse are leading email marketing services but GetResponse is clearly the better choice for anyone looking to create advanced automation sequences, landing pages, and other traditional email marketing features.

How do I close my SendGrid account?

You can close your SendGrid account from Settings–>Account Details→ Payment & Billing–>Your Products section in your account.

How To Find an Affiliate Niche When (You Think) All The Profitable Niches Are Taken

There’s a fundamental misconception that stops people from making money with affiliate niche marketing (or any other way to make money online) despite having all the necessary information.

Can you guess what it is?

It’s the belief that all the profitable affiliate niches are already taken. That you’re late, you’ve missed the bus, you’ve lost your chance, and you can’t compete with the early movers.

Because of this belief, most people never take the first step.

But in this myth-busting article, I’ll tell you why most of the profitable niches are still up for grabs, and how to find and evaluate niche ideas to launch a successful affiliate marketing business.

Keep reading.

What Is A Niche (In Online Marketing Terms)

Let’s start with the basic question first.

What exactly is a niche?

In affiliate marketing terms, a niche is a small segment (of a larger market) that is distinguishable because of its unique needs and problems.

For example, cooking & recipes is such a huge market you can’t really call it a niche.

Vegan recipes, on the other hand, is a much more defined niche. Indian Recipes For Vegans is an even more specific sub-niche of the same topic.

Similarly, weight loss is a huge industry but if you dig deeper you’ll find sub-niches in it like the Paleo diet, weight loss for new moms, vegan fitness, etc.

You’ll find tons of niches in every broad industry because there are so many different angles from which you can address the same problems or needs.

Why Find A Niche In The First Place?



Good question.

Why not just create a site about weight loss, online marketing, or any other broad topic in general instead of finding a niche?

The mainstream topics and industries are dominated by multi-million dollar publications that pump thousands of dollars every month into content creation, link building, SEO, and outreach.

They have the capacity and resources to create content about every topic in their niche. For example sites like WebMD or Healthline have dozens of writers who cover every aspect of the health niche.

Plus, they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid promotions, link building, and other promotional strategies.

You can’t compete with them.

But you can make a name for yourself and establish a successful site if you focus on a sub-niche of this industry like “health and fitness for basketball players” or “health benefits of veganism”

With this approach, you can target long-tail keywords that the bigger publications don’t focus on, attract search traffic to your site, and drive affiliate sales.

But is it possible to find such profitable niches anymore?



“All The Profitable Niches Are Taken” – Busting The Myth Of Niche Saturation

Here’s a screenshot of an article published by FastCompany, one of the top entrepreneurship and marketing sites, in 2012 that announced the death of blogging.

Here’s another article from 2012 that told us how Facebook was dead for bloggers.

And here’s one from 2013 that confidently announced that it was too late to make a fortune with affiliate marketing.

It’s 2020 and blogging is alive and kicking.

Jon Morrow makes more than $100K/month from his blog SmartBlogger which he started much later than 2012 in the internet marketing niche which is considered as one of the most saturated blogging niches.

Adam Enfroy started his blog in 2019 and now makes more than $80K per month on the back of exceptional content and high authority backlinks.



Brain Dean entered and dominated the SEO niche (again a very competitive industry) in just a few months because of his outstanding content.

In short, people will always tell you it’s too late to start because they’re just too lazy to work hard enough to achieve success (or they’re smart enough to keep you away from the lucrative niches)

But if you believe you can make a name for yourself in a niche, no one can stop you.

There’s no such thing as an oversaturated niche.

If you enter a crowded niche but create better, more useful, and more valuable content than your competitors, you will ultimately dominate that niche even if it takes a bit longer than a niche with no competition (like Brian and Jon did)

Or you could approach a popular niche from a unique angle and capture a huge market share.

For example, productivity and motivation are among the most crowded niches on the internet.

But by using a different angle and targeting a certain community, ProductiveMuslim became a multi-million dollar business site in just a few years.

Source

It’s the same productivity niche that most people consider impossible to penetrate. But by targeting a more specific subset of this niche, ProductiveMuslim achieved amazing success.

SEO and digital marketing, another niche that appears completely saturated. But ProChurchTools came up with digital marketing services and tools for churches only, a unique angle that instantly made them a successful business.



Source

These are a couple of classic examples of finding unique niches from seemingly saturated industries.

I can give a dozen more.

But the point you must understand is that there’s room for new entrants in every niche. You just need to use your imagination and do the necessary research and come up with unique angles and ideas.

Let me give you a few stats to open your eyes to the opportunities that await you:

According to the “Digital In 2020” report by HootSuite and We Are Social, global internet penetration stands at 59%.

Source

This means that 41% of the world’s population still doesn’t have even basic internet access.

Millions of new users are entering the global internet population every day. These people fall into different niches with no prior brand affiliations.

Like most of us, they will look for answers, find products, and search for information on Google Search.

All of this means the size of every niche is increasing every day and there’s room for new entrants because people need more information than ever before.

If you can fill this gap, you’ll be able to claim your piece of the affiliate marketing pie.

Fact #2: COVID-19 Has Accelerated eCommerce Growth Worldwide

eCommerce was already exploding when 2020 started but COVID19 has accelerated its growth even more.

Amazon, the world’s biggest retail eCommerce company, reported a 29% increase in sales in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 as compared to Q1 2019.

Source

While conventional business owners are suffering heavy losses around the world because of COVID19, Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) is increasing his wealth faster than ever before.

Just a few days back, Jeff’s net worth increased by $13 billion in one day.

Source

Amazon gets around 30% of its sales from affiliates and referrals which means the increase in its sales has also directly benefited its affiliates.

People are making more online purchases in almost every niche. As a result, product review sites and affiliate sites, in general, have seen a marked increase in traffic.

Again, these are very good signs and show that there’s more demand for high-quality affiliate content that can help buyers make more informed decisions.

Fact #3: Emerging Economies Offer New Opportunities

Almost 60% of all affiliate sales come from the US and Europe. However, this will drastically change in just a few years.

According to the World Bank and IMF, China will become the world’s leading economy by 2024. But there are other countries like India, Indonesia, and Russia that’ll be among the top ten economies in the world.



Source

As a result, eCommerce and affiliate marketing are exponentially growing in these regions as well.

There are local eCommerce companies just like Amazon, not as big but the same business model, in these countries that are making hundreds of millions of dollars and offer affiliate programs as well.

This also presents a great opportunity to tap into region-specific niches and create content around local problems that can be monetized with affiliate products.

Fact #4: Affiliate Marketing Budgets Are Skyrocketing

More companies are hiring affiliates and investing in affiliate marketing to increase sales than ever.

According to research, brands are collectively spending around $6.8 billion on affiliate programs.

Source

Another study shows that the annual spending on influencer marketing, which is similar to affiliate marketing in many ways, has increased by over $8 billion in the last four years and brands are expected to invest $9.7 billion in it by the end of 2020.

Source

Affiliate marketers that are considered an authority in their niches are also categorized as influencers and brands reach out to them with different partnership opportunities.

This is happening even in the non-traditional affiliate niches because brands are realizing the power of affiliates and influencers.

Wrapping Up The Niche Saturation Discussion

The stats, studies, and examples I’ve shared show that there’s massive growth potential not only in new and unconventional niches but also in the so-called saturated markets.

You can still enter a popular niche and make a name for yourself by finding a unique angle and by creating more value than your competitors.

If you look around, you’ll find many new and profitable niches around you.

Your job is to come up with the right niche ideas,


determine whether they’re worth pursuing, and then create valuable and problem-solving content that fulfills the needs of your target audience and establishes you as the go-to niche expert.

To make your niche research easier, I’ll share some of the main qualities of profitable affiliate niches and the various methods you can use to evaluate them.

The 4 Main Qualities Of A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niche

From an affiliate marketing perspective, a profitable niche has four main qualities.

Let me quickly describe each of them.

a) It Is Specific But Expandable

The right affiliate niche is focused on a very specific audience with well-defined needs and problems.

For example, “sports” is not a niche, it’s a very broad industry with lots of different audience groups with different needs and interests.

“Football news/tips” is a more focused niche that you can target. But you can go even deeper and target the English Premier League only.

At the same time, a profitable niche is expandable which means you can easily transition into other closely related niches when your business grows.

For example, if you brand your site for a niche such as “post-pregnancy weight loss tips for vegan moms in New York” you won’t have any room to grow in just a few months.

In comparison, a more balanced approach is to go for a niche like “weight loss for vegan moms”. It is focused on a small market segment but still has lots of room for growth.

Think long-term.

Start with a narrow niche, build authority in it and then gradually use that authority to transition into other closely connected niches.

b) It Is Based On Passions And Problems

A product is not a niche itself.

You can’t create a site about headphones only and call it a niche site. That’s the wrong approach because when the product goes out of demand, your site will die with it.

Any long-term business is based on a set of problems or passions and makes money by solving them.

DigitalPhotographySchool is a great example of a problem-focused niche site with tons of affiliate sales potential.

Source

The site is run by veteran marketer and CEO of Problogger, Darren Rowse. Instead of creating a site that only reviews digital cameras, he created a site around people’s passion for photography.

As a result, he covers the topic from several angles and also reviews different cameras to drive affiliate sales.

The content creation opportunities with a problem/passion-focused approach are unlimited.

This quote by Richard Branson, one of the world’s most successful businessmen, should be at the forefront of all your business decisions.



The objective of your site should be to identify a clear problem, create value-driven content that helps your audience, and pitch products that can help people solve that problem.

This way, you can keep promoting different products to your audience without ever going out of business because your site is based on a problem/need.

c) It Has High Commercial Intent

If you want to make money with affiliate marketing, you need to choose a niche where people frequently spend money on buying products and services.

This means you shouldn’t choose a niche just because you’re passionate or knowledgeable about it. It also needs to make commercial sense.

How do you find if there’s money in a niche?

I’ll explain this later in the article.

d) It Is Evergreen And Always In Demand

The right affiliate marketing niche is evergreen and in demand throughout the year. It’s not a seasonal niche that only peaks once or twice a year or when a specific event happens.

For example, a site dedicated to Valentine’s Day gifts is a seasonal site that only peaks once a year.

A site about relationships, which promotes relevant gift items and products throughout the year, is evergreen because of consistent demand.

How do you find such niches?

Let me share a few ways you can find lucrative affiliate marketing niches

7 Ways To Find Profitable Niche Ideas For Your Affiliate Site

Now that you know the main things to look for in a niche, here are few ways you can find profitable niche ideas for affiliate marketing.

01 – Evaluate Your Hobbies And Interests

Your hobbies and interests are the best places to start your niche research.

You already love doing them, you only need to find out if they’re worth pursuing as a serious business.



As someone rightly said, “choose a job you love and you won’t ever have to work again

There are numerous examples of people successfully turning their hobbies and interests into profitable businesses.

For example, according to a study by Statista, fishing is among the most popular outdoor activities in the U.S with nearly 50 million people participating in it in 2018.

Source

Ed Hitchcock, a fishing hobbyist himself, started a niche site to help other fishing enthusiasts by sharing fishing tips & tricks and different useful tools and products they can use.

Source

The site makes a decent income from affiliate sales, Google Ads, and other product sales.

SavvyGardening is a niche site that’s focused on gardening, another hugely popular hobby in the U.S. It’s run by three friends who’ve turned their passion for gardening into a profitable online business.

Source

Their content routinely promotes different affiliate products and also earns via Adsense.

What are your hobbies?

Think about them and write them down on a piece of paper.

You’ll be surprised how many niche ideas you can generate this way.

02 – Reverse Engineer Flippa Listings

Flippa is one of the world’s biggest platforms for buying and selling websites and online businesses.

Hundreds of websites from different niches are listed on Flippa and you can view their complete traffic and income stats to find the best-performing sites.

It is one of my favorite ways to find new niches.

Just head over to Flippa and go to the website listings section.

Here you’ll find hundreds of sites monetized with Amazon Associates, Google Adsense, Amazon FBA, Shopify dropshipping, and other methods.

You can dive deep into any site’s performance metrics, study why it succeeded, and find improvement areas that can grow it even further.

How does this information help you in niche research?

It opens your eyes to the different niches people are targeting to make insane amounts of money. For example, I once saw a site about home knitting tips for mothers and grannies. The site was making more than $15000/month from Amazon and Google Adsense combined.

I could never have imagined that so much money could be made in such an unconventional niche.

So spend some time on Flippa and list down any ideas you can find.

03 – Explore Amazon For Countless Niche Ideas

Amazon is one of the first places you should visit when researching niches for an affiliate site.



Why?

Because it literally sells everything under the sun.

You’ll find so many different product categories and unique products within those categories that you’ll never run out of niche ideas.

For example, here’s what I saw when I went to Amazon–>Pets–>Dogs.

Look at the number of sub-categories in the Dog section (Food, Apparel, Furniture, Grooming, etc.)

But as I said earlier, don’t equate products with niches. If you find a unique product that’s selling really well on Amazon, look at the problem it’s solving.

That’s your niche.

In the screenshot above, each of the sub-categories you see points to a unique set of problems. You can dig into those problems to find your unique niche.

You can apply the same approach to any other category and find tons of ideas.

04 – Dive Into Pinterest To Find Unique Niches

Pinterest is another amazing place to research unique niche ideas.

Why?

Because as compared to the other social networks, Pinterest has a lot more eCommerce activity with several million product Pins on it.

If you search for a broad industry on Pinterest, it shows you its sub-niches and other related product categories.

For example, here’s what Pinterest showed me when I searched for DIY (a very broad search query).

Right under the search box, you can see different tags that are actually sub-categories of DIY. For example, DIY Crafts, DIY Furniture, DIY Mother’s Day Gifts, etc.

Let’s see what comes up when I click on “Home Decor”



As you can see, Pinterest shows us several angles from which we can approach DIY Home Decor. You can see tags like On a Budget, Bedroom, Living Room, For Apartments etc.

Each of these categories can be treated as separate niches.

Or in case you plan to start a site about DIY home decor, you can use these angles to come up with tons of different content ideas.

In short, Pinterest is a really useful place to brainstorm niche ideas quickly.

05 – Scan Quora And Reddit To Find Tons Of Niches

Both Quora and Reddit are goldmines if you’re looking for niche ideas.

Unlike other research methods, Quora and Reddit not only help you uncover new niches but also give you a much deeper insight into how your target audience actually feels about a topic.

Start by searching for any topic on Quora and you’ll see a long list of questions and detailed discussions on it that you can go through to understand what your audience wants.

Let’s see what comes up when I search “vegan” on Quora.

As you can see, lots of interesting discussion threads about veganism.

The one about the “vegan diet for cats” looks promising. Maybe we can find a new niche in it.

This thread has 100+ responses and some really strong opinions both in favor of and against veganism.

There’s tons of value in it from a research perspective if you’re interested in veganism and want to start a niche site about it.

Similarly, you can find amazing insights by searching Reddit for any topic.

I personally found one discussion thread about acne really eye-opening because it helped me understand the emotional trauma and social pressures that acne patients can face.

Just look at what this patient is saying.

There’s some really strong language in there but if you read it purely from a research perspective it gives you so much to work with.

If you’re planning to start a site about acne problems, this thread shows you that acne does a lot more than leaving marks on your face

It has long-lasting emotional and social effects on the patients.

This is just one example.

Research any niche on Quora or Reddit and you’ll find tons of first-hand information about it that’ll help you understand the needs of your audience and come up with better niche ideas.

06 – Find Sub-Niches By Analyzing Udemy Courses

Udemy is one of the world’s biggest platforms of video courses where you can find tutorials and video classes in dozens of different niches.

There are a couple of ways you can use Udemy to find niche ideas.

Firstly, if you go to Udemy and hover your pointer over the Categories button, you’ll see a list of different categories in which you can find video courses.

Each category has several sub-categories and in many cases, the sub-categories are divided further into topics.

For example, when I clicked on the Personal Development category, around a dozen sub-categories came up. I selected one o the sub-categories, Self Esteem, which resulted in a list of 10-12 more topics.



All of these categories, sub-categories, and topics are potential niche ideas that you can note down for more research.

Secondly, when you click on any Udemy course it takes you to the course page where you can see the complete breakdown of the course content and its main topics.

This topic breakdown can help you find new ideas and angles in a niche.

For example, here’s the topic breakdown of a Keto diet course on Udemy

You don’t even need to sign up for an account on Udemy to view the course outline and topic breakdown.

I suggest viewing 10-12 relevant courses and analyzing their outlines to see if you can find any niche ideas or unique angles for your site.

07 – Find Unique Niches Using “Google Suggested Searches” And “People Also Ask”

Google has more data than any other company or even government in the world. Why not use it to find new niche ideas for your affiliate site?

Two sections in Google Search, People Also Ask and Suggested Searches, are especially useful for niche research.

Just type your main search query in Google without hitting the enter key to get search suggestions by Google autocomplete.

Let me type “vegan diet for” and see what comes up.

You can immediately see different angles from where you can approach the vegan diet niche.

For example, “vegan diet for dogs” is a completely different niche from “vegan diet for weight loss”. Similarly, vegan diet for athletes is a different topic from vegan diet for diabetes.

You can do this for any search query and immediately get ideas that you can research for niche profitability.

Now hit the enter key to any of those search terms and scroll down to the “People Also Ask” section in Google Search results.

When I search for “vegan diet for beginners” and scroll down to the “People Also Ask” section, here are the questions I can see.



These are the most common questions people are searching for on Google about “vegan diet”.

When you click on any question, Google adds several more relevant questions to this list.

For some topics, this section can expand into hundreds of questions.

It’s a goldmine for niche researchers because it gives you amazing insights into your target audience and gives you so many different angles to approach your target niche.

Wrapping Up Niche Research Methods

I’ve given you some really quick but effective niche research methods using which you can find a profitable niche for your affiliate marketing site.

There are many other ways to find new niches that I couldn’t list here because it would take thousands of more words.

But the bottom line is simple. To find a profitable niche, try to identify a problem or need that can be fulfilled by publishing great content and promoting high-priced products or services.

Before I wind up this article, let me tell you how you should evaluate a niche to see whether it’s worth jumping into or not.

7 Ways To Determine If A Niche Is Worth Pursuing

You’ve researched and listed down dozens of unique niche ideas, great!

But how do you know they’re profitable and worth pursuing?

Here are a few ways to determine if you should enter a niche or not.

01 – Analyze Search Volume And Competition

You don’t want to enter a niche where there’s no competition.

Why? Because lack of competition often means there’s no money to be made in that niche.

I’m talking about niche evaluation right now, not keyword research. In keyword research, you look for keywords with medium to low competition because you’re trying to rank for them

But in niche research, our objective is to get a general idea of whether there’s money in a niche or not.

To start your research, head over to SEMrush–>KeywordMagic Tool and enter your broad niche keyword.

This tool does a couple of things.

  • It gives you the search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC numbers for your target keyword.
  • It gives you thousands of other related keywords that you can use to evaluate your niche.



Search volume shows the number of times a keyword is searched on Google Search.

Keyword Difficulty (KD) shows how difficult it is to rank for a keyword-based on the strength and authority of the existing sites that are ranking in the top 10.

CPC (cost per click) is the average amount of money that advertisers are willing to pay for a single click for this keyword.

For now, let’s focus on search volume and CPC only.

In the screenshot above, look at the keyword “vegan chili recipe”. It has a search volume of 14K+ and a CPC of $2.31.

This means the advertisers are willing to pay $2.31 per click to show their ads for this search term. If advertisers are paying $2.31 per click, they’re obviously making a lot more money from it.

It shows there’s money to be made here.

If all the main keywords of a niche have high CPC scores, it means there’s a lot of money to be made in it. Whether you can organically rank for those keywords in search or not, is another matter.

I told you earlier that you don’t want to enter a seasonal niche that picks up only once or twice per year.

How do you find if your niche is evergreen or not? By searching for it on Google Trends.

Let’s search for “valentine’s day gifts” and see what comes up.

As you can see, the search interest in this topic is seasonal and spikes only once a year. It’s not a niche you‘d want to enter.

Now compare this with the search trend for “potty training” (a topic that’s always relevant).

See the difference?

Your niche should have a consistent search demand so that you can make money from it throughout the year.

03 – Find The Possible Monetization Opportunities In The Niche

I know you’re trying to find a niche to start an affiliate site.

But still, you should choose a niche where you can use multiple monetization methods and diversify your income sources.

Why? Because it distributes your risk and makes sure that you don’t go out of business if an affiliate program closes down or shuts your account.

Start by analyzing your competitors and see what methods they’re using to make money.

Search for your main topic on Google, open the top 10-15 sites, and see how they’re making money.

For example, here’s a site I found while searching for the top gardening blogs.

I looked around the site and found that it was monetized with Amazon products, Google Ads, sponsored content, and its own membership section with a monthly fee.



Looks good.

Now head over to Amazon to see what products can you promote as an affiliate in this niche.

The categories in the left panel are full of different products that gardening affiliates can promote to their audiences.

Similarly, check for relevant products on CJ, ClickBank, Offervault and other digital product affiliate networks to make sure there’s a wide range of affiliate products you can promote in this niche.

The more ways you can make money in a niche the better because it means there’s more potential for growth and lesser risk.

04 – Evaluate The Potential For Traffic Diversification

This is a really important point.

What are the main traffic sources of the top sites in your target niche? Are they driving traffic from search engines only or also from social media?

Any specific social networks that are more important in this niche? For example, in some niches, the top sites are getting as much as 60% of their traffic from Pinterest and Instagram because they’re visual sites with lots and lots of images.

According to research, only 31% of blog articles are found through Search Engines. The rest are found through social networks, email lists, referrals, etc.



Source

Is there potential for email marketing in your target niche? Can you grow a Facebook group to drive traffic to your site? Are there forums or discussion sites from where you can attract visitors?

These are important questions you need to answer because if there aren’t many traffic sources for a niche site, its growth potential is often quite limited.

05 – Measure Your Niche-Specific Knowledge

How knowledgeable are you about the niche you want to enter? You don’t need to be an expert in it but will you be comfortable creating content about it after research?

Or is it so technical that you’ll struggle to regularly publish articles?

If you plan to create the content yourself, you need to have some degree of familiarity with the niche.

The other option, of course, is to hire niche-specific freelance writers to create content for you if you have the resources for it.

In that case, having knowledge of a niche isn’t necessary for you.

06 – Look For Potential Gaps In The Market

To make money in a niche, you’ll need to create more valuable and useful content than your competitors.

For this, you need to identify the gaps in your competitors’ content and find ways to improve it.

So first of all, analyze the top-ranking content in your target niche to see where it lacks and how it can be improved.

For example, can you make it longer and more comprehensive by adding more step-by-step guidelines, examples, and case studies?

Can you add more images, videos, or GIFs to make the content more engaging than your competitors?

Or are there any questions about the topic that the top-ranking content doesn’t answer?

A great way to find such gaps is to study the comments on your competitors’ articles.

Another way I identify gaps in a topic is by finding the top-selling books about it on Amazon and reading the 1,2, and 3-start reviews about it.

It’s amazing how much you can learn about your audience’s needs and what they want to learn about a topic by reading those comments.

The third way is scanning Reddit and Quora for relevant discussions which I’ve already explained earlier.

07 – Find Your Unique Niche Angle And Selling Point

Before you finalize a niche for your affiliate site, there’s one more thing you need to determine.

What’s going to be your unique selling point (USP)? What makes you different from the existing sites? What will you do to stand out?

In the more competitive niches, this question becomes even more important.

For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko entered the SEO niche very late but grew his site into one of the top SEO resources on the back of amazingly detailed content.

Detail and research became Brian’s USP.

Similarly, what separates BestReviews from the other review sites is that you know they thoroughly test products before reviewing them.

You need to find your unique angle or something that makes your blog different from your competitors.

This will make it much easier for you to sell the products you’ll promote

Are You Ready To Find A Niche For Your Affiliate Site?

Choosing the right niche is critical for the success of your affiliate marketing business.

But as I’ve shown you, it’s not as difficult as most people think.

There are still lots of profitable niches that you can dominate by understanding the needs of your audience and publishing high-quality content that answers their questions.

Even in the so-called saturated niches, you can still make money by finding a unique angle or simply providing more value than your competitors.



There’s no reason to feel hopeless.

Just put on your research hat, follow the tips I’ve shared in this article, and start looking for the right affiliate marketing niche.

Trust me, a profitable niche is just around the corner.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a niche?

In internet marketing terms, a niche is a well-defined segment (of a bigger industry market) that is distinguishable because of its unique problems and needs.

What are the most profitable niches for affiliate marketing?

Most niches can be profitable if you can find market gaps and offer more value than your competitors. However, the following industries and their sub-niches are usually considered more profitable because of their size and monetization potential.

Weight loss & Fitness, Health, Self-Improvement, Make Money Online,


Relationships, Investing, Financial Advice, Web Hosting, B2B Software, etc.

Where can I find profitable niche markets?

Profitable niche ideas are all around you. You just need to start analyzing your daily routine, hobbies, interests, and the content you consume from a niche marketing perspective. Look for problems/needs with mass appeal that you can be solved profitably by promoting the right products and services.

What are the characteristics of a profitable affiliate niche?

An ideal affiliate marketing niche is well-defined, profitable, evergreen, and based on long-term needs/problems.

What are the examples of a niche?

Career Advice For Veterans, SEO For Doctors, Post Pregnancy Weight Loss Tips, Self-Improvement For Porn Addicts, etc are all examples of well-defined niches.

Are all the profitable niches already taken?

That’s a common myth. Niches with high demand are usually crowded but you can succeed in them by identifying a new angle or a need that hasn’t been addressed sufficiently.

How can I enter and dominate a competitive niche?

By approaching the niche from a new angle, by identifying opportunities with competitor analysis, and by providing significantly more value to your audience than your competitors.



MailChimp Review & Pricing: Is It The Best Email Marketing Software For Beginners?

I have a special place in my heart for Mailchimp.

It’s a great product, yes. But without it, I couldn’t have experienced a world-class email marketing product when I was just starting out as a blogger in 2012.

Except for Mailchimp, none of the other email marketing tools offered free plans back then (there are a few others now) and I was just too broke to purchase a premium product.

Mailchimp is still among the most popular email marketing tools for beginner bloggers and online marketers. In fact, it has become a fully integrated online marketing platform that goes way beyond traditional email marketing.

But is it worth paying for?

Is it the right tool for advanced email marketers as well?

Does it offer you all the features and tools you need to build a successful email marketing and lead generation strategy for your business?

And most importantly, is the pricing for its paid plans justified?

I’ll answer all these questions in this detailed Mailchimp review.

Keep reading.

Mailchimp Review & Product Details

Mailchimp is a leading online marketing and lead generation software product with more than 12 million active users around the world.

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp is primarily known as a powerful email marketing tool that’s popular among small businesses and beginner bloggers because of its Free Plan.

But over the last few years, it has evolved into a fully integrated online marketing platform that gives you multi-channel marketing capabilities with features like hosted domains & websites, landing pages, social media advertising, email marketing, automation, A/B testing, lookalike audiences, and a lot more.

Email marketing, however, still remains its strongest suite.

According to Datanyze, a marketing research company, Mailchimp dominates the email marketing industry with a whopping 64.7% market share.

Source

I knew Mailchimp was popular but this study really blew me away.

Again, this popularity is probably because Mailchimp was among the first top-quality email marketing services to offer a completely free plan for up to 2000 subscribers.

A large number of Mailchimp’s free users upgrade to its paid plans instead of switching to other email marketing services because of the features and benefits it offers.

As a paid Mailchimp user, you get everything from email marketing and automation to website & landing page building tools and social media marketing capabilities on one platform.

This is why Mailchimp is comparable to any other premium email marketing automation tools right now.

However, their recent pricing changes haven’t done any favors to their target audience.

Let me explain more in the next section.

Mailchimp Pricing & Free Plan – Is Mailchimp Free?

Mailchimp revised its pricing plans in 2019 which sparked a lot of debate on whether the changes were justified or not.

I’ll tell you what I think about it but let’s have a look at the different Mailchimp pricing plans first.

As you can see, Mailchimp offers four different pricing plans – Free, Essential, Standard, and Premium.

Understandably, Mailchimp Free Plan is very popular among beginner bloggers and small businesses.

It gives you basic email marketing features along with autoresponders, surveys, websites, landing pages, and several other features.

As a free Mailchimp user, you can maintain a list of up to 2000 subscribers and send 10,000 emails per month.

For advanced features like behavioral automation, If-then drip campaigns, advanced A/B testing, Retargeting via Facebook and Instagram, and 24/7 email & chat support, you’ll need to go for one of its paid plans.

Mailchimp’s Standard Plan, which has the best features for most bloggers, online marketers, and small businesses, starts at $14.99/month.

But that’s for up to 500 subscribers only.

When your list grows, you’ll have to pay more.

For 501-2500 subscribers, you’ll be charged $49.99/month

For 5000 subscribers, you’ll be paying $74.99/month.

And when I say subscribers, remember that the subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts all make up your audience count in Mailchimp.

I have no problem with subscriber-based pricing but this is slightly expensive when compared with other email marketing services in the same category.

Plus, I don’t like being charged for unsubscribed contacts. That doesn’t sound fair to me. But Mailchimp isn’t the only service to do this kind of pricing.

There’s no Free Trial for the paid Mailchimp plans but you can sign up for the Free Plan if you want to experience the product.

Other than the standard pricing plans I’ve shared, Mailchimp also offers a “Pay As You Go” plan in which you can purchase credits for sending emails and using other Mailchimp features. You can learn more about this plan here.

So what do I think about the Mailchimp pricing plans?

They’re slightly higher than some of the other email marketing space but considering all the features Mailchimp offers it saves you from spending money on several other tools.

For example, you can create landing pages, websites, email pop-ups, and social media retargeting campaigns with it along with all the standard email marketing features.

If you’re an advanced user and utilize Mailchimp to its full potential, the price seems justified.

Don’t’ forget, it’s still a very good marketing automation product we’re talking about.

For beginners, however, the pricing isn’t ideal.

Let me give you a quick look at some of its pros and cons so that you have a better understanding of what it offers.

Mailchimp Pros & Cons, Strengths & Weaknesses

Before we analyze Mailchimp features in detail, let’s have a look at some of its main strengths and weaknesses.

  • An attractive Free Plan that offers up to 2000 subscribers with all the basic email marketing features
  • Intuitive design and user interface
  • Very good drag & drop email builder
  • A large collection of email design templates
  • Decent A/B testing features for email broadcasts
  • A form building tool you can use to create different types of pop-ups (exit intent, delayed, etc.) and opt-in forms
  • Plenty of responsive email opt-in form templates
  • An easy to use landing page builder
  • Automation workflows based on subscriber activitiy, tags, and interaction with your emails
  • A platform for creating Facebook and Instagram ads based on your email audience
  • Create lookalike audiences from your email lists
  • High-quality blog content, email marketing guides and a comprehensive knowledge base to help customers
  • Both subscribed and unsubscribed users are counted in your contact limit
  • Very limited landing page templates
  • The pricing plans are not beginner-friendly
  • Advanced automation workflows are missing
  • No visual automation builder to create workflows
  • No A/B testing features for landing pages and opt-in forms

Mailchimp Features – Everything You Need For Email Marketing

Mailchimp offers an impressive range of online marketing and lead generation features to its paid users.

Standard Email Marketing Features

Mailchimp gives you all the standard email marketing and automation features that are comparable to most other leading products in this industry.

Here’s a detailed look at some of its main features and benefits.

I – Manage Your Contacts With Lists, Tags, Segments, and Groups

Subscriber management is one of the most important aspects of any email marketing tool.

In Mailchimp, you can manage your contacts in four different ways.

  • Audiences

Audiences (previously called Lists) are the primary way of managing contacts in Mailchimp. Every Audience is a separate contact list made up of subscribers from different sources.

For example, if you own multiple sites, you can create separate contact lists for every site. Or you could create different lists for different products/courses you’re selling on the same site.

Mailchimp free users can only create one Audience while customers in Essential and Standard plans can create 3 and 5 Audiences respectively.

You can add new contacts to your Audience manually, by connecting it with a Mailchimp opt-in form, or a third-party list-building tool.

  • Segments

You can create multiple segments within an Audience to further categorize your contacts based on their behavior or common traits.

This helps you send more personalized and focused email campaigns to specific segments instead of mass emailing all your contacts.

Mailchimp gives you lots of different segmenting options.

For example, in the screenshot below, I’m segmenting a list based on Campaign Activity (how they responded to my emails)

But there many other factors based on which you can create segments.

Overall, you can add up to five conditions to include or exclude contacts in a segment and filter exactly the type of contacts you’re looking for.

  • Tags

Tags are keyword-based labels you can assign to your contacts in order to identify them based on their behavior, source, or any other noteworthy factor.

For example, you can tag any subscribers who come from a specific lead magnet or landing page.

  • Groups

Groups are categories your subscribers choose to describe themselves while signing up to your list.

For example, an entrepreneurship blog can ask its subscribers whether they’re freelancers, small business owners, consultants, or product creators.

Your subscribers will e grouped together based on their responses.

How To Use Mailchimp Audience Management Options

Apart from using Audiences, Segments, Tags, and Groups to organize your contacts according to their interests and behavior, you can use them to send targeted email campaigns.

For example, you can send email campaigns to subscribers in a particular or contacts with a certain.

You can also build automation sequences based on different tags and Audiences.

II – Create Pop-Ups and Embed Forms To Your Website

You need sign-up forms and pop-ups on your site to convert visitors into email subscribers.

With Mailchimp, it’s pretty easy to create different types of popups and embedded forms for your website and landing pages.

To create a form, click the “Signup Form” link from the “Create” menu in your dashboard.

Choose Embedded Form or Popup Form from the top menu and select the list for which you want to create it.

I chose the Pop-up form option which too me to the form builder tool.

Here you can choose different form layouts, add your brand image, and customize the look of your pop-up.

You can also choose exactly when to show your pop-up. For example, immediately when a visitor lands on your page or when visitors are about to exit your page (exit intent pop-ups)

You can add subscribers from individual pop-ups to different audience segments or assign them tags for better management.

If you’re creating an embedded for, you can copy/paste its code to your site after configuring it in Mailchimp.

If you’re using WordPress, then simply install the Mailchimp WordPress Plugin to display pop-ups and forms on your site.

Overall, I like the simplicity of this Mailchimp feature but would’ve liked more display rules for better audience targeting.

III – Create Responsive Email Campaigns With The Drag & Drop Email Builder

Mailchimp’s email builder tool is one of the best I’ve seen in the email marketing industry.

It’s very easy to use, with no confusing or complex, options. Plus a drag & drop interface in which you can literally create any type of email within minutes.

The same email builder is used for single emails, campaigns, and autoresponders.

To create an email, click on “Email” in the Create menu in your dashboard.

Next, you’ll need to name your campaign and choose the type of email you want to create (regular, automated or plain text)

I’ve chosen “Regular” emails for this demonstration.

This takes us to the main email builder interface where you can choose your email recipients, choose the sender name and email, create a subject line, add preview text, and design your email.

While choosing recipients, you can choose your whole list, target a smaller segment of your audience, or contacts with specific tags.

If you collect the first names of your subscribers during sign up (which you should), you can also check the “Personalize” option to address subscribers by name in your emails.

Next, click on Design Email to start creating your email content. You can choose from a long list of Mailchimp’s email templates or start from scratch by choosing a blank email template.

This is where the real fun starts.

You can use Mailchimp’s drag & drop email builder to create any type of email and any elements to your content.

There are tons of styling options for every element and the overall email template as well.

Once you’re done creating your email, you can test it on different devices to make sure everything looks perfect, and send it at once.

Alternatively, you could schedule the campaign for later or choose Send Time Optimization (paid plans only) to let Mailchimp send the email on maximum engagement times for each subscriber.

There are several other email options and settings that you can configure before sending or scheduling your email campaigns.

You can enable click tracking, eCommerce link tracking, integrate Google Analytics, or enable conversations on your emails.

Overall, Mailchimp has a pretty impressive email builder tool which is simple for beginners but has all the advanced options you can imagine.

IV – Design Attractive Campaigns In No Time With Content Studio

Content Studio is a pretty useful Mailchimp tool that can save a lot of time while creating email campaigns and landing pages.

Here’s what it does.

You can upload all your images, videos, and brand assets to Content Studio, connect your Facebook/Instagram accounts or link it with your eCommerce store.

Content Studio will automatically pull all the multimedia files and brand assets to Mailchimp and make them available whenever you want to create email campaigns or landing pages.

Plus, it gives you basic image editing options, along with a huge library of GIFs, so that you can customize images according to your target audience.

V – Create Mailchimp Drip Campaigns To Engage Subscribe

Modern-day email marketing is incomplete without drip campaigns (automated email sequences).

Mailchimp offers several ready-to-use automation sequences which I’ll discuss later. But to create drip campaigns, click on Create–>Email–>Automated

Click on “Custom” to create custom automation sequences and drip campaigns for your email list.

If you’re using Mailchimp Free Plan, you won’t be able to create more than one automated email per workflow.

But paid plans allow complete drip campaigns with multiple emails based on If-Then conditions.

You can configure your workflow in the custom automation section and select the conditions that trigger a campaign, its schedule, target audience, and next step.

There are different campaign triggers from which you can choose. For example, you can trigger a sequence when a visitor purchases a product on your site or clicks on a link in your email campaigns.

You can also use advanced triggers but for that, you’ll need a developer to configure Mailchimp API for you (if you can’t do it yourself)

These are the settings for an individual email. Once you’re done with them, you can add more emails to your drip campaign and configure them the same way.

Mailchimp drip campaigns can be targeted towards subscribers with specific tags, complete audience lists, or segments within your audiences.

Overall, Mailchimp offers decent automation features especially for beginners and small businesses but the absence of a visual drip campaign builder and the need for a developer to configure advanced automation leaves a lot to be desired.

Advanced email marketers might not enjoy using these features as much.

VI – Use MailChimp Automations To Increase Conversions

There are plenty of ready-to-use automation sequences in Mailchimp that you can use to engage your audience and increase your email marketing ROI.

You can choose them from Create–>Email–>Automated section.

From here, you can choose any of the ready-to-use automation workflows. For example, you can automatically send birthday emails to your subscribers, welcome email sequences, blog updates, or follow-ups on your previous campaigns.

You also have the option of sending a single automated email or a series of emails. This is particularly useful if you want to host an email course or an educational series for your subscribers.

You can also send abandoned cart emails to any subscribers who leave a purchase mid-way on your site by connecting it with your Mailchimp account.

Advanced website event-based automation sequences are also available in Mailchimp but you’ll need to configure Mailchimp API on your site for it.

Just like drip campaigns, the overall Mailchimp automation features cover most bases but need to be more user-friendly in order to really compete with the leading marketing automation tools right now.

VII – Use Shoppable Landing Pages To Set Up Your eCommerce Store

You can create pretty awesome lead generation and eCommerce landing pages with Mailchimp. Shoppable landing pages, in particular, is a really useful feature using which you can create fully responsive eCommerce landing pages integrated with Square payments.

Using Shoppable landing pages you can launch eCommerce email campaigns and allow users to purchase from your landing pages directly.

Mailchimp currently offers 10 landing page templates but new ones are being added.

You can also start with a blank canvas or edit the templates to match your brand’s style and colors using the landing page builder tool.

Just like Mailchimp’s email builder tool, the landing page builder also uses a drag & drop interface with lots of editing options.

You can literally change everything on a page and replace it with your brand’s colors, images, icons, and content.

To sell products and accept online payments on your landing page, you’ll need to connect your Square account with Mailchimp.

Other payment options are not available for now.

With this landing page builder tool, you can create landing pages for lead magnets, social media lead generation campaigns, or product sales campaigns without using a third-party landing page app.

Plus, it is connected with your Mailchimp Content Studio which means all your images and brand assets are already there for you to use on your landing pages.

VIII – Optimize Email Campaigns With A/B Testing

Mailchimp offers some pretty good A/B testing (called Split Testing as well) for email campaigns

Split testing is a conversion optimization technique to find the best-performing version of your email.

With Mailchimp, you can run A/B tests on four different elements of your email campaign – Subject Line, From Name, Content, Send Time

In basic A/B testing, you can test one element per test. For example, when you test different subject lines, you can’t test the From Name in the same test.

However, in higher-priced plans, you can also perform multivariant testing in which multiple factors can be changed and tested together.

The winner

is chosen based on the criteria you define in the settings of your A/B

For now, A/B testing is only available for email campaigns, not for landing pages or opt-in forms which is a bit of a letdown.

Otherwise, the A/B testing features in Mailchimp are better than many other email marketing tools I’ve used.

Unique Features of Mailchimp

Other than the standard email marketing features, Mailchimp offers several unique options that you won’t find in other similar products.

IX – Use The Drag & Drop Mailchimp Website Builder To Create Your Site

Mailchimp comes with a pretty useful drag & drop website builder using which you can create your website and host it on Mailchimp servers as a part of your subscription package.

All websites come with a free .mailchimsites.com domain name. You can also purchase a .com domain from Mailchimp or connect an existing domain with your Mailchimp site.

Here’s an example of what you can create with the Mailchimp website builder.

Mailchimp’s website builder works just like its landing page and email builders. It uses drag & drop blocks with which you can create web pages from scratch or edit existing website templates.

You can add as many pages and sections to your website as you want, and edit them individually.

You can’t compare this website builder with WordPress or Squarespace but if you’re looking to save money on website design and hosting, Mailchimp website builder is a pretty useful tool to create your fully hosted and secure website.

X – Grow Your Business Faster With Mailchimp Lookalike Audiences

Mailchimp Lookalike audiences is an innovative feature that helps you grow your subscriber base quickly by reaching out to people who’re similar to your existing subscribers.

You can do this through social media ads and email campaigns.

In social ads, Mailchimp targets new Facebook and Instagram users on your behalf based on your current subscriber base.

In email campaigns, Mailchimp finds new subscribers for you from its own database.

All you need to do is to create a landing page, an email, and choose a segment of your audience that you want Mailchimp to replicate.

Based on your target audience and location, Mailchimp will send your email to people who’re similar to your subscribers. They can click on your email offer, visit your landing page, and convert into subscribers.

Wrapping Up Mailchimp Features

As you can see, Mailchimp has lots of innovative email marketing features that you can use to create impactful campaigns.

It has other features such as detailed analytics, social ads, postcards, etc. that I couldn’t cover in this post.

But clearly, there’s a lot you can do with Mailchimp especially if you’re a small business owner or beginner blogger.

Advanced marketers would probably want more automation features in Mailchimp.

Mailchimp Integrations | Getting More Out Of Mailchimp

Mailchimp integrates with more than 300 different applications and tools.

Here are a few of them.

a. Mailchimp Integration With Website Platforms

Mailchimp can be used on all with all the leading website platforms and content management systems (CMS)

– Mailchimp Integration With WordPress

You can easily integrate Mailchimp with your WordPress site by installing the official Mailchimp WordPress plugin.

You can use the plugin to create and manage sign-up forms and pop-ups on your site and integrate with other WordPress tools.

Mailchimp also has a premium WordPress plugin that offers several other advanced features.

– Mailchimp Integration With Squarespace

You can use Mailchimp with Squarespace to collect emails, publish forms, and display pop-ups on your site. To execute the integration, you’ll need to edit your Squarespace DNS Settings and manually authenticate Mailchimp’s connection with your site.

You can follow the step-by-step process from this help article.

– Mailchimp Integration With Wix

You can easily connect your Wix site with Mailchimp by enabling Mailchimp from Wix Marketing Integration section.

Connecting Mailchimp would allow you to automatically transfer all your Wix contacts to your Mailchimp Audiences.

b. Mailchimp Integration With Landing Page Builders

Mailchimp’s landing page tool is pretty useful. But if you’re already using another landing page builder, you can connect it with Mailchimp easily.

– Mailchimp Integration With ClickFunnels

To connect your Mailchimp account with ClickFunnels, you’ll need to generate a Mailchimp API key from the integrations section.

You’ll then connect your ClickFunnels account with Mailchimp by copying the API key to the Mailchimp app in ClickFunnels.

You can find the step by step process here.

– Mailchimp Integration With LeadPages

Mailchimp and LeadPages can be connected using the Mailchimp API key.

You can find the step by step process here.

– Mailchimp Integration With Unbounce

Unbounce is another top quality landing page and lead generation tool that you can directly connect with your Mailchimp account.

To integrate the apps, you don’t need an API. Simply head over to the integrations section in Unbounce, select Mailchimp, log in to your account and choose the list you want to connect.

You can view the step by step process here.

c. Mailchimp Integration With Other Tools

There are tons of other tools that integrate with Mailchimp.

– Mailchimp Integration With Salesforce

To connect your Salesforce account with Mailchimp you’ll need to install the Mailchimp app for Salesforce.

Once the app is installed, you need to authenticate your account by logging into Mailchimp from Salesforce.

You can find the step by step process here.

– Mailchimp Integration With Facebook

You can easily integrate your Facebook account with Mailchimp from the Integration section in your Mailchimp account.

Once Mailchimp and Facebook are linked, you can show sign up forms on your Facebook Page and run Facebook ads campaigns from Mailchimp.

You can find the detailed instructions here

– Mailchimp Integration With Google Analytics

By integrating your Google Analytics account with Mailchimp, you can track campaign stats and individual email performance in Google Analytics.

Read the detailed instructions here.

Mailchimp Reviews – User Feedback & Testimonials

As you’ve seen, Mailchimp is a powerful all-in-one marketing tool that not only powers your email marketing strategy but also helps you adopt an overall integrated online marketing approach.

Most of the online reviews about Mailchimp, especially by newbies and small businesses, are quite positive.

It has average user ratings of 4.3 and 4.5 on G2 and Capterra respectively.

And there are lots of people who’re singing its praises on social media as well.

Source

Source

Source

But there are many dissatisfied users as well.

Source

The general feedback on different forums and online review sites about Mailchimp is quite positive.

However, people aren’t really happy about their recent pricing changes.

Mailchimp Alternatives – Other Email Marketing Software You Can Use

In case you’re not convinced that Mailchimp is the right email marketing tool for you, there are several alternatives you can try.

Mailchimp Alternative#1: Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a sloid marketing automation tool and a pretty good Mailchimp alternative.

Like Mailchimp, ConvertKit also offers a Free Plan but it’s limited to 1000 subscribers only (Mailchimp allows 2000 subscribers).

Its premium plan starts from $29/month for 1000 subscribers with a 14-day free trial.

Mailchimp Alternative # 2: Mailchimp vs. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another popular Mailchimp alternative that offers all the standard and several advanced email marketing features.

It offers two paid plans at $20 and $45 per month respectively for up to 500 subscribers. You also get the first month free as a paid subscriber.

However, there’s no free plan on offer like Mailchimp.

Mailchimp Alternative # 3: Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a popular email and SMS marketing platform that is often mentioned as a possible Mailchimp alternative.

Its premium version is priced at $30 for 1000 subscribers with unlimited emails and automation features.

However, it doesn’t offer the range of features you get with Mailchimp at a slightly lower price.

Mailchimp Review Verdict – Is It The Right Email Marketing Software For You?

Is Mailchimp worth your money?

It’s a tricky question.

Let me explain.

There’s no doubt that Mailchimp offers all the email marketing and automation features (plus a lot more) that any beginner or small business needs.

Plus, it offers a very attractive free plan that’s a lifesaver for anyone just starting out in the online marketing space.

However, its automation features aren’t as intuitive and detailed as some of the other leading email marketing products.

Plus, its pricing plans aren’t as flexible as its competitors.

If you’re a beginner or intermediate marketer with a limited budget, Mailchimp is right for you if you make use of all the features it offers, for example landing pages, website builder, pop-ups, etc.

For advanced marketers, Mailchimp is an ideal product if they know how to make use fo the advanced automation features using Mailchimp API.

Overall, there’s no question about the quality of Mailchimp as a service provider and if you become a paid subscriber, you won’t regret it.

Mailchimp Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Mailchimp used for?

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing software products among bloggers, digital marketers, and small businesses. It gives you all the necessary tools and features to run fully integrated email marketing and lead generation campaigns.

Is Mailchimp really free?

Mailchimp has a Free Plan which allows up to 2000 email subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. Its paid plans offer more features with higher limits.

Why is Mailchimp so expensive?

Some marketers consider Mailchimp to be slightly more expensive than some of its competitors but considering all the features it offers, the price can seems acceptable.

Can I use Mailchimp with Gmail?

No, you cannot use Mailchimp to send mass email campaigns through Gmail.

Is Mailchimp automation free?

Yes, Mailchimp offers basic autoresponder features in its Free Plan. For advanced automation features, you’ll need to purchase one of its paid plans.

Can I send mass email campaigns with Mailchimp?

Yes, you can use Mailchimp to send mass email campaigns. However, there’s a limit of 10,000 emails/month for Free users.

Can I schedule email campaigns with Mailchimp?

Yes, you can schedule emails to be sent at a later time using Mailchimp.

What is the subscriber limit in the Mailchimp free plan?

You can have up to 2000 email subscribers in a with the Mailchimp free plan.

Is Mailchimp hard to learn?

Mailchimp has a pretty easy to use interface, a regularly updated blog, and a detailed knowledge base. All of this means that getting used to Mailchimp shouldn’t take you a lot of time.

Does Mailchimp go to spam?

If your subscribers have willingly signed up to your list with active email addresses, Mailchimp will deliver your emails right in their inbox.

Can I use Mailchimp for affiliate marketing?

Mailchimp has a reputation for suspending accounts that regularly send affiliate product links in email campaigns. So the safer approach is to use links of blog articles/pages that contain affiliate links instead of directly emailing affiliate links to your subscribers.

What are the best free email marketing services?

Mailchimp, SendInBlue, Sender, and SendPulse are all high-quality email marketing services that offer free plans.

What are the best Mailchimp alternatives?

GetResponse, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, SendInBlue are among the top Mailchimp alternatives.

Is Mailchimp the best email marketing software for beginner bloggers and marketers?

Mailchimp is certainly among the best email marketing software for beginners because of its free plan that offers all the necessary email marketing features.

Mailchimp vs Constant Contact – Which one is better?

Mailchimp is more popular as compared to Constant Contact because of its free plan. Overall, you’d have to say that Mailchimp is a better option for most businesses.

Mailchimp vs. Sendgrid – Which one is better?

Both Sendgrid and Mailchimp offer free plans and some really good features. So it’s hard to choose a winner here. However, I personally find Mailchimp easier to use.

Mailchimp vs. GetResponse – Which one is better?

GetResponse is a very powerful email marketing tool that’s certainly a very good choice for serious marketers. For beginners, however, Mailchimp is a better option because of its free plan.

Can I create landing pages with Mailchimp?

Yes, Mailchimp has a drag & drop landing page creator you can use to create different types of landing pages.

How do I close my Mailchimp account?

You can delete your Mailchimp account from Account Settings and clicking on the “Delete Account” link.

GetResponse Email Marketing Review: Functions, Features & Free Trials

GetResponse Email Marketing

If you’re looking for the right email marketing software to build your subscriber base and grow your business, this detailed GetResponse review is just for you.

GetResponse is a world-class marketing automation suite that gives you all the features you need to attract, engage, and convert email subscribers into customers and brand advocates.

But is it the right tool for everyone? Not really.

Unlike most online product reviews, this article will share both the strengths and weaknesses of GetResponse and help you decide if it’s the right email marketing automation tool for your business.  But first, here’s a snapshot of some key takeaways for GetResponse:

  • Starting Price: $12.3/Month
  • Free Trial: Yes (30 Days – no credit card needed)
  • Average Rating: 4.5/5

Let’s get started.

What is GetResponse? Review & Product Details

GetResponse is a powerful email marketing automation software suite that comes with a range of different tools and features designed to simplify online audience building and product selling.

Established in 1998, GetResponse is one of the leading email marketing software companies with more than 400K users from 180+ countries.

Over the years, it has evolved from a simple email subscriber management tool to a complete marketing automation suite that allows you to automate email marketing, create landing pages, host webinars, sell products and services, collect online payments, and perform many other online business activities.

A/B testing, list segmentation using tags, in-depth analytics, and sales funnels are among the other features that make GetResponse a complete online marketing solution.

And here’s the best part.

The basic email marketing and automation features of GetResponse are available at a very affordable monthly subscription price which makes it ideal for beginners and intermediate marketers and bloggers.

GetResponse Pricing & Free Trial

We’ll take a closer look at the different features and benefits of GetResponse later in this article but let me quickly give you an overview of its pricing plans.

GetResponse is available in four different monthly subscription plans that are suitable for different types of businesses.

Here’s a screenshot of the GetResponse pricing plans (additional discounts on annual billing).

As you can see, the four plans – Basic, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise – cater to different business needs.

The Basic plan is ideal for beginner bloggers and marketers since it offers all the core email marketing features plus landing pages and several other useful tools in just $12.30/month (1000 subscribers)

However, your final monthly fee will depend on your list size. The original plans are priced for up to 1000 subscribers but the price increases as your subscriber base grow.

Again, this favors beginners and intermediate bloggers since they’ll only pay more when they have more subscribers.

GetResponse does not offer a Free Plan.

However, every premium plan comes with a Free 30-Day Trial in which you can explore the product in detail and decide if its the right choice for your business.

The free trial doesn’t require your credit card information so it’s really a win-win scenario if you want to test the tool before paying for it.

GetResponse Pros & Cons, Strengths & Weaknesses

There’s a lot to like about GetResponse (as you’ll find out later in this post) but it still has some weaknesses.

Let me give you a quick overview of its pros and cons.

  • Advanced visual automation workflows that are easy to create and manage
  • Easy to design email campaigns and autoresponders
  • User-friendly interface that’s easy to navigate
  • Website event tracking options that you can use to trigger personalized email sequences.
  • A/B testing features to help you find the best performing version landing pages and forms
  • Tag-based subscriber management options
  • Create complete sales and marketing funnels
  • Ideal for affiliate marketers promoting products from ClickBank, JVZoo, ShareASale, and other affiliate networks.
  • Easily integrates with dozens of popular apps and software products
  • Offers a wide range of responsive landing page templates
  • Offers a wide range of HTML email templates
  • A library of 5000+ stock photos you can use in your campaigns
  • Beginner-friendly pricing plans
  • Limited opt-in form templates that are already used by thousands of marketers
  • There’s no free plan
  • No refunds after you sign up for a premium plan
  • No popular online community groups
  • Limited A/B testing capabilities for emails.
  • Opt-in forms are not responsive

Overall, GetResponse offers a lot of great email marketing and automation features for a pretty attractive price.

In my opinion, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sign up for its free 30-day trial and experience it yourself.

GetResponse Features – Everything You Need For Email Marketing

Calling GetResponse just another email marketing tool would be oversimplifying things, to say the least.

It’s a complete suite of online audience building tools that are packed with powerful features to help you attract, convert, and grow your subscriber base.

Let’s explore some of its main features in more detail.

Standard Email Marketing Features

GetResponse offers all the standard features you’ll find in any high-quality email marketing product.

You can customize most of its features to your exact business needs.

I – Manage Your Contacts With Tags and Custom Fields

In addition to managing multiple email lists, which is the standard practice with most email marketing tools, GetResponse allows you to manage subscribers through a combination of tags and custom fields.

Tags are keyword labels that you can assign to your individual contacts based on their behavior and engagement pattern with your emails.

For example, you can tag subscribers coming from a particular article on your blog or a guest post you’ve recently published.

Custom fields, on the other hand, are additional information fields you can use in sign-up forms to gather more detailed information about your subscribers.

For example, in addition to the standard First Name and Email Address fields, you can add custom fields like Gender, City, Country, Date, Time, Currency etc. in your opt-in forms.

How do you use this information in your email marketing campaigns?

You can use both tags and custom fields to run personalized email campaigns and segment your subscribers much more efficiently.

For example, you can tag all the subscribers who’ve signed up to your list from a guest post and send them a tailored email campaign.

Or send a special email offer only to the women on your list.

Apart from tag-based segmentation, GetResponse also offers all the standard email list segmentation options like segmentation by Email Open Rate, Clicks, Last Campaign, Subscriber Source, Form, etc.

Why is segmentation important?

Email campaigns targeted towards a well-defined audience segment often result in much higher subscriber engagement. A comparative study of segmented and non-segmented lists shared by SmartInshights also backs this assumption.

Overall, the subscriber management options in GetResponse give you complete control over your contact lists and open up numerous ways you can engage your subscribers.

II – Convert Subscribers With Attractive Sign-Up Forms

I personally don’t like email pop-ups as a website user.

But countless studies show they’re great at converting website visitors into email subscribers.

For example, a study by Sumo found that the top 10% pop-ups in terms of performance had an average conversion rate of 9.08%.

This means if your site gets 500 daily visitors, you’ll be able to get 1362 subscribers every month with pop-ups only.

Not bad at all.

With GetResponse, you can create many types of sign-up forms and pop-ups for your website, blog, specific articles, and landing pages.

To create a form in GetResponse go to “Create A Form” in your account dashboard and choose “List Builder Apps”.

From here, you can choose opt-in types such as exit-intent popups that show up the moment your visitor intends to leave your page.

Or you could go for a fixed bar on top of the screen, scrolling forms, or sign-up forms that users can fill to download a lead magnet.

The List Builder Wizard in GetResponse gives you dozens of pop-form templates that you can use with a single click.

What’s more, once you choose a template, GetResponse will automatically tailor it to your website’s brand colors if you click the “Color Magic” button.

However, most of the form designs are not responsive which means they won’t adapt to your mobile site’s design and might impact opt-in rates for mobile subscribers.

III – Capture Leads With Responsive Landing Pages

GetResponse has done a great job with landing pages.

It offers you dozens of high-quality and fully responsive landing pages that you can use for list-building campaigns, product launches, and other business objectives.

As you can see, GetResponse gives you templates for all kinds of landing pages, eg. Downloads, Webinars, About Me, Promotions, etc.

I love the designs they offer.

All of them are fully responsive and have a sleek and modern look.

Every template comes with its own Thank You page where the visitors are sent once they fill the signup form on your main landing page.

Getresponse landing pages can be used with forms or integrated with other third-party applications as well.

IV – Design Eye-Catching Email Campaigns With GetResponse Email Builder

Creating eye-catching email campaigns is pretty simple with GetResponse.

Its email builder tool uses a drag & drop interface using which you can create stunning HTML emails or plain text emails for your subscribers.

Before creating an email, you need to name your campaign, choose the sender’s email address, the target email list, the subject of your email, its preview text, and recipients.

You can see the user interface in the screenshot below which is pretty self-explanatory.

You can enable Click Tracking to track clicks on any links in your email and also integrate it with your Google Analytics account.

Plus, you can choose to send the email immediately, schedule it for later, or choose “Perfect Timing” which automatically sends emails at the optimal time of the day when your subscriber is most likely to open it.

Once you’re done with the settings, it’s time to design your email in the email designer.

If you want to create an HTML email, you can choose from the template library of GetResponse which has dozens of responsive and high-quality email templates.

Or you can design your own template from scratch.

In this case, I’ve chosen a template from the library.

The right panel shows drag & drop blocks that you can use to add different elements like images, videos, text, icons, etc. to your email.

It’s all pretty simple and easy to use even if you’re creating a campaign for the first time.

Once you’re done with designing the email, you can preview it on different devices and send test emails to make sure everything looks perfect.

Now just press the send button and watch your campaign fly.

V – Use GetResponse Drip Campaigns To Engage Subscribers

Email drip campaigns (also called autoresponder campaigns) are automated email sequences that are sent to your subscribers on predefined conditions.

They’re automated “set and forget” emails that Getresponse will keep sending to any subscribers who meet the conditions you’ve defined in your autoresponder settings.

With GetResponse you can create anything from a simple Welcome autoresponder campaign to highly complex drip campaigns based on different If-Then conditions.

There are two types of drip campaigns available in GetResponse – simple autoresponders and advanced automation sequences.

To create an autoresponder, click on “Create Autoresponder” in your account dashboard.

Everything in this section is the same as the email campaign builder except for the Autoresponder Settings section in which you can determine exactly when your emails are sent.

For example, in the screenshot above, the emails will be sent on Day 0 which means as soon as someone subscribes to your list.

You can also choose to send emails with a slight delay.

You can use autoresponders for less complex automation such as Welcome Emails or email courses that are sent on a fixed interval irrespective of how your subscribers interact with your content.

For the more complex automation sequences based on If-Then conditions, you can use the automation builder tool in GetResponse.

It gives you a visual campaign builder which makes it really easy to visualize even the most complex drip campaign sequences.

Here’s an example.

In this sequence, multiple conditions apply and emails are sent to the subscribers based on their interaction with your previous messages.

There are unlimited possibilities with the kind of drip campaign sequences you can create using this visual creator.

The sequences might look complex from the outside, but they’re pretty easy to create if you know what you want to achieve with your campaign.

Newbies generally consider drip campaigns too advanced for their skillset.

With GetResponse, however, creating complex drip campaigns is pretty easy and you start enjoying the process once you understand how the tool works.

VI – Use GetResponse Automation Sequences To Skyrocket Conversions

In case you lack the time or imagination to come up with new automation sequences, GetResponse has you covered.

It gives you a complete library of ready-to-use automation sequences that you can apply to any of your subscriber segments or email lists.

As you can see, the library has automation sequences for all kinds of business objectives, eg Welcome emails, email course launch, customer retargeting, win back lost customers, course promotion, etc.

Every automation sequence is fully customizable. To use a sequence, just click on it, and add the relevant values from your account (for example, tags you want to target, your target email list, etc.)

Or you can create an automation sequence from scratch by using the drag & drop elements in your automation builder tool.

It’s all pretty simple.

You first need to choose the conditions that a subscriber needs to meet to trigger the automation sequence.

GetResponse gives you a list of pre-defined conditions you can choose from.

For example, you can trigger an automation sequence for subscribers who click on a certain link in your emails, subscribe to a particular list, or when they’re assigned a certain tag.

From there onwards, you can build automation sequences by using drag & drop conditions in the automation builder and choosing the exact subscribers you want to target.

Using this automation builder you can build all kinds of sequences for example, you can automate the process of assigning a tag to any visitors who come from a certain page on your blog.

As soon as the tag is assigned, they’ll be added to an automation sequence which sends them relevant emails with calls to action links.

When they click on the link they’ll receive a pre-defined set of emails that’s in line with their actions.

In case they don’t click on your link, they’ll be approached with follow up emails and other incentives to engage with your content.

In short GetResponse automation sequences allow you to experience the true potential and power of email marketing.

The only drawback of the GetResponse automation section is that you can’t create emails for your automation sequence on the go. You need to have all your messages and lists ready before you start creating a sequence.

Other than that, GetResponse automation features are top-quality.

VII – Trigger Website Event-Based Emails With Advanced User Tracking

Here’s another really powerful way to make your email marketing campaigns more persuasive and engaging.

GetResponse allows you to track the activities of your subscribers on your website and send them emails based on their engagement with different site elements.

For example, you can send follow-up email campaigns to any email subscribers who visit your product page but do not buy from you.

Similarly, you can trigger customized emails to any subscribers who read an article on your blog but do not click the CTA button.

Or trigger abandoned cart email campaigns to any subscribers who leave their purchase mid-way on your site.

The impact of such emails is huge.

For example, research shows you can recover 69% of lost sales by sending 3 follow-up abandoned cart emails.

How does website event tracking work?

If you’re a WordPress user, you simply need to install the GetResponse WordPress Plugin to enable tracking.

Whenever a subscriber from your email list visits your website, the plugin will track their activities and allow you to retarget them with personalized email campaigns.

For platforms other than WordPress, you need to add event-based Javascript code to your site.

VIII – Optimize Campaigns With Advanced A/B Testing

A/B Testing or Split Testing is the process of running two different variations of your email with two separate groups of your subscribers to see which one works better.

It’s a crucial email marketing optimization technique that can help you increase the overall engagement and ROI of your email marketing campaigns.

This is why research shows that 60% of marketers consider A/B Testing important for improving conversions.

GetResponse gives you powerful A/B Testing features using which you can test different versions of your emails, landing pages, and opt-in forms.

For example, you can test different subject lines for the same email, use different sender names, or compare HTML vs plain text emails to see which one gets the highest engagement.

You can find the email A/B Testing option in the Email Marketing section of your GetRepsonse account.

The screenshot below shows the A/B Test configuration area in which you can test up to 5 different subject lines.

You can choose the testing criteria (clicks or opens) and choose the size of your target audience.

For example, in the screenshot below, different subject lines will be tested on 48% of your subscribers and the best performing subject will be used for emails sent to the remaining 52% of your subscribers.

Landing page and opt-in form A/B tests can have up to 10 variations.

GetResponse doesn’t offer advanced A/B testing capabilities that experienced marketers look for, but it’s certainly good enough for any new or intermediate blogger.

IX – Measure Performance With In-Depth Analytics

You can’t improve what you can’t measure.

This is why analytics are so important in email marketing.

GetResponse gives you detailed stats about your subscriber activity, email campaign performance, automation, and the overall ROI of your email marketing strategy.

It also comes with real-time statistics that are updated on the go.

You can also integrate your GetResponse account with Google Analytics so that you have a much clearer picture of the impact of email marketing on your overall website traffic and engagement rates.

Smart reporting is another useful option using which you can schedule email performance reports and send them to yourself and all the relevant team members.

Overall, GetResponse Analytics gives you reports on all the standard performance metrics that are necessary to track your email marketing performance.

Unique Features of GetResponse

GetResponse is much more than a simple email marketing tool which is why it offers several unique features that you might not find in other similar products.

X – Boost Sales By Hosting HD Webinars

Webinars are among the most effective lead generation strategies used by online marketers.

A study by the Content Marketing Institute found that 66% of marketers rate webinars as the most effective B2B marketing tactic.

GetResponse comes with a world-class webinar platform using which you can host HD quality webinars with up to 100 attendees (in the Plus package).

Its webinar feature is fully integrated with the email marketing platform which makes it really easy to market your webinar and attract new subscribers.

It also gives you other standard webinar features such as recordings, screen sharing, multimedia sharing, different audience engagement tools, and payment integration.

If you want to host webinars with more than 100 attendees, you can upgrade to the Professional plan which allows up to 300 participants.

XI – Perform Research And Gather Primary Data With Surveys

An engaged email list is among the most valuable online business assets because it allows you to learn about the real needs and preferences of your target audience.

To make this task even easier, GetResponse comes with an interactive survey tool using which you can create engaging and eye-catching surveys for your audience in no time.

You can use drag & drop blocks to create as many surveys as you want and share them with your subscribers and the general public using their unique URL.

Surveys not only help you gather information from your subscribers but also attract new subscribers since your survey participants can share it with their contacts and social media friends.

XII – Create Optimized Sales Funnels

GetResponse gives you the ability to create fully optimized marketing and sales funnels by just filling in your details into ready to use funnel templates.

Conversion Funnels, formerly known as Autofunnels, is the funnel building tool in GetResponse that’ll help you create high-quality funnels in no time.

It covers everything from the initial sign up page, pop-up forms, and follow up emails, to sales pages, upsell pages, and order confirmation email, etc.

Conversion Funnels has over 30 ready to use funnel templates that include landing page copy and email copy scripts from some of the best direct response copywriters.

Wrapping Up GetResponse Features

I’ve given you a quick overview of some of the main features in Getresponse. However, there are many options that I didn’t cover.

It’s pretty clear that GetResponse gives you everything you need to run successful email marketing, lead generation, online marketing campaigns.

Some of its features still need improvement, but the overall package is pretty impressive.

GetResponse Integrations | Getting More Out Of GetResponse

GetResponse is one of the most popular email marketing products which is why it seamlessly integrates with 120+ different third-party tools and applications.

Let me cover some of the integrations that marketers commonly use.

a. GetResponse Integration With Website Platforms

As an email marketer, you’ll need to integrate GetResponse with your website in order to use many of its features effectively.

Thankfully, getResponse integrates with all the popular website platforms and content management systems (CMS).

– GetResponse Integration With WordPress

You can easily integrate your WordPress website with GetResponse by installing the official GetResponse WordPress plugin.

Integrating WordPress with GetResponse allows you to create sign up forms and landing pages for your site plus it enables website event tracking that you can use in your automation sequences.

– GetResponse Integration With Shopify

If you’re running a Shopify store, you can integrate it with GetResponse to easily collect email addresses using forms and landing pages on your site.

You can integrate Shopify with GetResponse by searching for Shopify App from the “Integrations and API” section.

Once connected, GetResponse will access your Shopify customer database and access data such as customer name, email, address, number of orders, best-selling products, abandoned cart, etc. and use this data to help you build smarter automation workflows and email follow-ups.

– GetResponse Integration With Magento

If your website is built using Magneto, you can integrate it with GetResponse using the Magneto App in the integrations section.

This integration allows you to turn customers from your website into email subscribers and add them to different autoresponder sequences.

b. GetResponse Integration With Landing Page Builders

You can create attractive and responsive landing pages with GetResponse. But In case you’re using a popular third-party landing page app, you can integrate it with your Getresponse account.

– GetResponse Integration With ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is among the most popular marketing automation and landing page builders right now.

To integrate your GetResponse account with CLickFunnels, you’ll need to generate a unique API key from the “Integrations and API” section in your GetResponse account.

When you click on “Generate API Key” it’ll create a unique API key that you can copy/paste in the API integration section of your ClickFunnels account.

Once your accounts are integrated, you can import contacts and user information from ClickFunnels to your GetResponse account.

– GetResponse Integration With Leadpages

Leadpages is one of the top landing page builders used by thousands of marketers and online businesses.

Leadpages integrates with GetResponse via API key (the same way as ClickFunnels).

Just head over to the Integrations and API section of your GetResponse account, generate your unique API key, and copy/paste it to your Leadpages integration section.

– GetResponse Integration With InstaPage

InstaPage, another leading app for landing pages, integrates with GetResponse the same way as the other two landing page builders.

Generate a unique API Key and head over to the integrations section of your InstaPage account.

Search for GetResponse, and enter the API key to connect your accounts.

c. GetResponse Integration With Other Tools

There are several other useful applications that you can integrate with your GetResponse account.

– GetResponse Integration With Google Analytics

Integrating your Google Analytics account with GetReposne adds UTM parameters to your emails that help you track subscriber analytics in much more detail.

You can integrate Google Analytics with GetResponse from the Integrations section of your account.

– GetResponse Integration With VWO

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is a leading conversion optimization tool that helps you run A/B tests, heat maps, track conversions, and review websites.

To integrate VWO with GetResponse, you’ll need your VWO account Id.

When you’re creating a landing page with GetResponse, you’ll choose VWO in the Analytics section and enter your VWO Id to integrate the app with your landing page.

– GetResponse Integration With PayPal

You can integrate many of the leading payment services like Amazon Payments, Stripe, and PayPal with your GetResponse account to accept payments directly with your GetResponse forms.

PayPal can be easily integrated with GetResponse from the integrations section.

Once PayPal is integrated with your GetResponse account, your customers can pay for your products using PayPal or a credit/debit card on GetResponse order forms.

GetResponse Reviews – User Feedback & Testimonials

As you might’ve guessed, I’m quite impressed with the overall package GetResponse offers.

But what are the other GetResponse users saying about it?

On Capterra and G2, two leading customer review sites, GetResponse has average ratings of 4.1/5 and 4/5 respectively.

Pretty impressive.

Here are a few public reviews I could find about GetResponse that can be traced back to the original reviewer.

” I absolutely love the product and especially the service. It has all the features I need and they continue to add more. Their support is second to NONE” by Elena

“I love the ease of use and ability to create a very large backlog of emails quickly. I like to send out daily newsletters to my list and after about a week or so I will go back through and add those emails into an autoresponder that I will use for new leads that haven’t been getting the original newsletters. This makes my life so much easier and allows me to spend less time on the platform while getting more done. In addition, I love the Spam Score feature that helps keep my messages out of the spam folder. If your email is going to spam, your message isn’t being heard” by Tom

Here are some frank opinions about GetResponse from random twitter users.

But not everyone’s happy with it of course.

Overall, you’ll have to say that the general customer feedback about GetResponse is quite positive.

After looking at the product’s features in detail, I can understand why.

GetResponse Alternatives – Other Email Marketing Software You Can Use

GetResponse is a solid email marketing tool. But in case you’re looking for alternatives, there are several other email marketing services you can consider.

GetResponse Alternative#1: GetResponse vs. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is perhaps the most popular GetResponse alternative.

The main reason for its popularity is its Free Plan that offers all the standard email marketing features, including basic automation, for up to 2000 subscribers.

However, it lacks features like landing pages, conversion funnels, and advanced automation that GetResponse offers.

Its premium plans start from $9.99/month.

GetResponse Alternative # 2: GetResponse vs. AWeber

AWeber is one of the oldest email marketing tools used by thousands of bloggers and online marketers.

It’s a solid platform when it comes to the standard email marketing features.

However, it’s user interface feels outdated and it lacks advanced automation features that modern tools offer.

Its premium plans start from $19/month.

GetResponse Alternative # 3: GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a world-class and modern email marketing and automation platform that’s better than most of its competitors when it comes to automation sequences.

It is very popular among experienced email marketers and can be considered a very good GetReposne alternative.

Its premium plans start from $9/month.

GetResponse Review Verdict – Is It The Right Email Marketing Software For You?

GetResponse is a very impressive email marketing and automation tool.

It gives you everything you need to run fully integrated email marketing campaigns and grow your subscriber base from scratch.

It’s pricing plans are also very competitive and make it a pretty good choice for beginners and intermediate bloggers and marketers.

However, experienced marketers might feel let down by it’s A/B testing and automation features.

But overall, it’s a solid product that’s worth your money.

To experience GetResponse yourself, sign up for its 30-Day Free Trial.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an email marketing and marketing automation software that gives you several powerful tools and features to grow your email list, build your audience and market your products and services effectively.

How much does GetResponse cost?

GetResponse pricing depends on the size of your email list. It offers four different plans – Basic, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise – that come with different features and tools. The Basic plan starts from $12.30/month.

Is GetResponse free?

GetResponse doesn’t have a Free Plan but all of its Premium Plans come with a 30-Day Free Trial (no credit card needed).

Is GetResponse a CRM?

GetResponse comes with a complete CRM solution that’s integrated with its email marketing platform which allows users to track and manage the complete customer lifecycle.

How do I use GetResponse?

You can start using GetResponse by signing up for its 30-Day Free Trial.

AWeber vs. GetResponse – Which is better?

AWeber and GetResponse are both leading email marketing solutions. However, GetResponse has the edge when it comes to marketing automation features.

GetResponse vs. Mailchimp – Which is better?

Mailchimp and GetResponse are both popular email marketing solutions with very similar features. However, GetResponse has better landing pages, advanced automation sequences, and more testing options as compared to Mailchimp.

How do I delete my GetResponse account?

You can delete your Getresponse account by selecting “Cancel Subscription” in the Billing section of your account.

How do I connect GetResponse to ClickFunnels?

You can easily integrate your GetResponse account with ClickFunnels by entering your unique GetResponse API key in the integration section of your ClickFunnels account.

14 Smart Ways To Create Authority Content in Any Niche (Even If You’re Not An Expert)

One of my childhood friends has a great quality.

Talk to him about any subject – politics, sports, fashion, celebrities, gossip, science – and he’d always know more about it than you.

When he’s around, he controls conversations and adds value with his thoughts no matter what the topic.

He’s no Einstein, not a bookworm and he’s certainly not a nerd.

So how does he know so much?

He “hacks” topics.

Yes, that’s right.

He hacks topics just like we hack niches.

His formula is simple – talk confidently, engage with positive body language, rephrase other people’s arguments and cite experts.

This is not a flawless formula but, most of the times, it works.

As a niche marketer who’s always looking for new, unique and profitable niches, this is exactly what you need to do as well.

Being knowledgeable and passionate about a niche is great, but you’d always come across highly profitable niches that you know nothing about.

But you still want to make money from it, don’t you?

So how do you create high-quality content in that niche?

If you have some money, you could hire freelance writers who know your niche well.

Depending on their expertise, they could charge you anywhere between $10 to several hundred dollars for a blog post.

But what if you don’t have money, and want to create the content yourself?

That’s the problem I’m going to solve for you in this post, by giving you a simple formula that’ll make your blog posts more actionable, trustworthy and highly engaging.

What is Authority Content and Why Should You Care

You should care because establishing authority and delivering value is the core idea behind content marketing.

You can’t make sales in any niche unless people actually value your advice.

When your readers start considering you an authority, they don’t question your recommendations – they just follow.

That is why influential bloggers are able to generate twice as much sales for brands as compared to direct advertising.

When you target a small niche, you can build influence quickly and drive much more action as compared to a broad target market.

A study by Technorati revealed that more than 54% consumers agree that the shorter the community size, the greater the influence.

Source: Technorati Digital Influence Report

All this brings me back to my original point.

To build trust and influence in any niche, you need to create high-quality content that establishes you as an authority.

Every expert tells you three core components of high-quality content.

Such content is hard to create, especially in a niche you know nothing about.

But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

You can make your content appear high quality simply by making a few changes to your writing style.

Let me show you how.

1. Analyze Your Competitors To Understand the Niche

Before you start creating content in a new niche, you need to spend some time researching your potential competitors.

Start by identifying the most popular blogs and the most influential marketers in that niche. Study their writing style, look at their most popular posts and see if there’s any niche specific jargon that they use.

There are several tools you can use to research your competitors.

For example, you can use BuzzSumo to find the most popular blog posts in your target niche.

Let’s take the “weight loss” niche as an example.

The free version of BuzzSumo gives you the top 10 most popular posts on a topic. For more, you’d need to purchase the premium version.

But these posts are enough to give you insights on your audience.

Subscribe to the email lists of all the top blogs and take out time to review the most popular posts on all the blogs you find.

Once you’re done with the initial research, head over to your Facebook account.

Facebook is a goldmine for content marketers and researchers.

You can learn more about your target audience and competitors on Facebook than any other platform.

How?

By using Facebook’s Audience Insights (Facebook –> Manage Ads –> Audience Insights)

Now search for the websites that you found on BuzzSumo (not the posts, just the primary domain) in the “Interests” tab.

If they have a large following on Facebook, they’ll show up in the list.

If they don’t, look for any other pages related to your target niche “weight loss”

I searched the sites that BuzzSumo listed in the Interests section and found some of them.

Then I Googled the “best health and fitness blogs”, and added them to the Interests section as well.

And since all of the interests I chose were closely related to my target niche, the resultant audience is also pretty similar to the one I’ll be writing for.

As the snapshot above shows, it’s a pretty large audience which I can use to understand this niche and its interests.

It shows their like/dislikes, demographic details, recent activity on Facebook etc.

You can dive deep into this information and learn as much about your audience as you want.

For example, I could go to the Page Likes tab and see what other Facebook Pages are like by this audience.

You can expand this list to see more Facebook Pages that your selected audience follows.

Filter out these results to choose the pages that are relevant to your niche.

Open them in separate tabs, review their posts and find the topics that generate the most shares, comments and likes.

Other than Facebook, you can also find valuable content insights on Quora and niche specific forums.

You can also look at the report, 1781 Profitable Niches by Stuart, to find more angles while researching your competitors.

When you analyze different discussions and blog posts, you’ll see that some topics are more popular than others.

People are more interested in learning about those topics.

List down all such topics in a separate sheet and come up with your own list of titles that address the same topic from a different angle.

Most importantly, target small and specific topics, and go deep when writing them.

Don’t try to cover a lot of different topics in the same post.

You’re new to this niche and you’ll have to spend a lot of time researching if your title is too broad.

“Writing in a conversational tone makes you look like an authority and encourages people to read your content and even participate by commenting.” – Neil Patel

2. Write on a Narrow Topic to Simplify Research

To build authority in any niche, you need to create in-depth, well-researched and actionable content.

Doing so becomes hard when you try to cover 10 different topics in one post.

It becomes nearly impossible when you try to do this in a niche you know nothing about.

According to Sam Ovens, who runs a seven-figure training program for online consultants, going too broad and trying to cover too much in a single piece of content is one of the most common mistakes he sees by new consultants and marketers.

The smarter route is to identify narrow topics within your niche, break them down into even smaller segments and create separate posts on all of them.

For example, instead of targeting health and fitness, a very broad niche, go deeper and target something like post-pregnancy weight loss tips.

Break this down even more into segments like post-pregnancy weight loss for first-time moms, post-pregnancy exercises, healthy post-pregnancy diet etc.

You can use a free tool like AskThePublic to generate dozens of such ideas.

You could eventually come up with post titles like

  • 7 Easy Exercises To Lose Baby Weight After a C-Section
  • 11 Post-Pregnancy Weight Loss Myths First Time Moms Should Avoid
  • 5 Easy Diet Changes To Help You Lose Weight After Delivery

Researching content for these titles is MUCH easier since they’re very narrow topics targeting very specific problems.

Targeting a narrow topic and providing actionable solutions to your audience, instead of taking a bird’s eye view of multiple topics, also establishes you as an authority much faster.

3. Use Lots of Snapshots and Visuals to Keep Your Readers Engaged

One of the easiest ways to make your content look professional and trustworthy is by using snapshots and visuals frequently.

It not only makes your content look good but also helps your readers understand and consume information much more effectively.

Research shows that our brains process visual information almost 60,000 times faster than plain text.

A reader is much likelier to remember visual based content as compared to simple text.

In fact, a separate study shows that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by almost 80%.

Roger Dooley, a neuro-marketing expert, recommends using images and snapshots with your content even when they add no apparent value.

Why?

Because images and snapshots make your content look more credible.

When you’re writing a blog post or product reviews, create snapshots and explain things in detail to your readers.

To make your snapshot even more effective, use Evernote Web Clipper .

It allows you to add text, arrows and symbols to your snapshots.

You can also highlight any area that you want your readers to see.

Even when you’re taking snapshots from other websites, you can add your own comments or highlight things for your readers.

This makes the image much more useful and makes your content look credible.

To add more originality to your content, and engage your readers even more, you can create your own animated gifs.

You can use them to demonstrate a small product function, for example, opening and closing of a bottle or jar (or any other product feature).

Or you can simply use them to add a bit of fun to your content.

You can create your GIFs yourself by using Giphly.

Just paste a video link and select the frames to convert into a GIF file.

Also consider adding videos, especially in your product reviews.

According to Internet Retailer, viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product review video.

Videos not only engage visitors much more effectively but also increase your web site’s average time on site which directly benefits your SEO.

Brian Dean, Backlinko, uses videos as a part of his blog posts.

For example, if he writes a list post that has 15 or 17 points, he would describe 1 or 2 points using video content.

Again, this makes the content look really good and adds a lot of credibility giving you authority content.

You can apply this technique to your blog posts and product reviews.

4. Quote Other Experts and Thought Leaders to Look More Trustworthy

The quickest way to establish credibility and make your content trustworthy is by quoting and mentioning the already established niche experts in your content.

You’re in a new niche, so people don’t know you.

But they know the other influencers.

You can simply borrow their credibility to look credible yourself.

You can do this in a number of ways.

Find the most popular blogs in your niche using Google search.

Just search a few popular niche keywords on Google, and the most popular blogs will show up.

Find a quote from any popular blog post and mention it in your own content.

For example, I know very little about psychology.

But when I need to look smart in front of my audience or add weight to my arguments, I quote consumer psychology experts like Sean D’Souza

Or you could go to Amazon.

Look for the most popular books on Kindle store related to your niche and note down the author’s name.

Then you go to Google and look for quotes by this author or reviews on his book, or see if he owns a blog.

When quoting an expert, use snapshots as well, just to add an extra layer of credibility.

If you think about it, people like Larry King, Oprah and countless other television hosts and journalists use this same approach.

They become trustworthy themselves by interviewing other influencers and celebrities.

This is the power of associating yourself with the right people.

“People feel like they need someone to ‘knight them’ before they can provide value to others.I’m telling you to knight yourself.” – GlenClick here to Tweet this!

5. Add Numbers, Data, and Research Findings to Appear Knowledgeable

Start using numbers in your content.

Wherever you put them, numbers create an immediate impact and make your content stand out.

For example, a study by Conductor found that headlines with numbers were significantly more eye-catching for social media users as compared to simple text headlines.

Having your own voice and opinion is important.

But it’s even more important to back your opinions and arguments with data.

For example, which of the two statements sound more credible

Here’s another example,

A similar way to look good is to quote credible research sources or new findings in your niche.

You can find stats about almost anything on sites like Statista and Pew.

In case you don’t, simply search Google using

  • your main niche keywords + statistics
  • your main niche keywords + research
  • your main niche keywords + infographic

Infographics, in particular, are an easy source of stats in any niche.

In fact, you can use them as snapshots in your posts as well, and link back to the original source (like this)

Source: Frugal Dad

Using established research and studies by other experts is another easy way to make your content look reliable.

When you’re new to a niche, you need to regularly refer to such studies and numbers to look trustworthy.

With time, however, your readers will start trusting you even when you don’t go into too much detail.

6. Write in a Conversational, But Authoritative Tone to Position Yourself Higher

Remember my friend from the start of this post? Here’s what you need to learn from him.

The so-called “expert status” is a relative term.

Nobody is going to crown you as an expert.

You need to crown yourself.

You’re an expert for anyone who knows less than you.

And that’s not very hard to do.

In fact, if you spend a couple of hours researching a niche, you’re likely to learn more about it than most people.

Your only challenge is to deliver that information in a confident manner that makes your readers believe whatever you say.

Your authority and confidence should reflect in your writing.

When writing blog posts, talk directly to your reader and look him in the eye.

  • Use decisive words, give them instructions and tell them what to do. People like to be guided by experts. When you tell them to do something with confidence, they’ll follow your advice.
  • Use short paragraphs and sentences.
  • Ask questions and seek feedback just like you do while talking to someone.
  • By running a few split tests on his blog, Neil Patel found that readers spent nearly 200% more time reading his content when he intentionally used a conversational tone.

The conversational tone works so well because it makes the reader feel like someone is actually talking him through his problem.

Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that blog posts written in a conversational tone produce more oxytocin in the reader’s brain.

Oxytocin causes the brain to feel empathy and trust for the other person and helps in building more positive engagement.

You can use the conversational tone to your advantage even when you’re writing product reviews.

It silently builds a bridge between you and the reader and makes him trust you more.

7. Engage With the Top Influencers in Your Target Niche on Twitter

Twitter is a great place to learn about a new niche, connect with influencers and use their knowledge to create high-quality content.

Simply search your primary keyword on Twitter and click on the “People” tab to see hundreds of relevant Twitter users

Try following accounts that are managed by individuals themselves since that allows you to connect with them, build conversations and ask questions

Also, look for any Twitter chats related to your target niche.

I searched for “fitness chats” and found a hashtag #FitnessEdu that an influencer used to host her weekly Twitter chat.

Twitter chats are even more useful since they involve direct Q&A between influencers and their target audience.

Plus, you get to hear on the same topic from different people which gives you some great insights on the topic.

Plus, you get to hear on the same topic from different people which gives you some great insights on the topic.

Just going through the timelines and conversions of some of the experts on Twitter will give you tons of information about your target niche, save you hours of reading time.

And give you lots of pointers for creating high-quality content.

8. Read 3 Top Selling Books in Your Niche

Not everyone likes reading books.

But it’s one of the best ways to become an authority on any subject.

If you read the top 2-3 books on Amazon on any subject, chances are that you’ll become more knowledgeable about that topic than most of your competitors.

But even if you don’t have the time to read a couple of books, you can still use Amazon to gain insights on your target audience.

How?

By simply reading the reviews for the most popular books.

Many customer reviews have enough information and value that you can use to create separate blog posts.

They’re real-life testimonials from people and often carry real-life experiences.

When you’re analyzing the reviews, look for any specific problems or topics that pop up again and again.

Use these insights in your content and quote different reviews from Amazon to make your posts richer and more valuable.

9. Host a Virtual Summit to Generate Content for Months Ahead

Hosting a virtual summit is one of the smartest ways to build authority in your niche and gather gems that can be converted into high-quality blog posts for several months to come.

Seriously, this strategy alone can significantly boost your brand image and give you more knowledge about your niche than any book or webinar.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, virtual summits are online events where 15-20 (or more) share knowledge and tips on a very specific topic.

All using video calls on Skype or Google Hangouts.

The event is free for anyone to attend while it’s live (usually 3-4 days).

But once it’s over, people can pay to access the complete event.

When executed properly, virtual summits can skyrocket your email list, connect you with dozens of influencers and establish you as a niche authority.

They’re happening in every niche these days.

Here’s an example

But how does this exactly help you build authority in a new niche?

Simple.

When you interview 15-20 experts on a very specific topic, asking intelligent questions, people assume that you’re knowledgeable about that niche.

In reality, you’d just be asking the questions that you shortlist while researching for your summit.

But the viewers see it differently.

Think of Opera or Larry King or hundreds of other TV hosts that have become celebrities by interviewing other celebrities.

What exactly is their own expertise?

When people keep seeing you with other experts, they assume you’re an expert as well.

But there’s another benefit.

When you host a virtual summit and interview several dozen experts, you gain a lot of practical knowledge about your niche in a very short time.

Plus, you can always repurpose your virtual summit by using the insights from each interview and turning it into a separate blog post.

And just in case you’re thinking why experts in a new niche would accept the invitation to your virtual summit, read this detailed guide for the answer.

10. Create Round Up Posts To Crowdsource Quality Content

How do you create quality content in a new niche with an empty pocket?

By creating round-up posts and crowdsourcing content from other experts in that niche.

There are several types of round up posts you can create.

For example, you can take just one very specific problem and ask as many experts as possible for their top 3 tips to solve it.

This is usually the most common way to create round-up posts.

But it can take you several weeks or even months and countless follow-ups to create such posts

An easier way is to simply choose a problem and search the web for any experts who’ve commented on it.

When you have a list of a few dozen experts, simply copy their advice (with a link to the original post) and make it a part of your roundup post

But there’s an even easier type of round-ups that really consumes no time either.

Just choose a problem, search for the best content published on different blogs and forums, and publish a list of all such posts on your blog.

Round-up posts are so effective because they allow you to create lots of unique and high-quality content without actually writing it yourself.

Readers love them because they get to see multiple opinions on the same topic by different experts.

Always add your own opinion at the bottom of each expert’s advice.
Tell your readers what you think about it and how it can solve their problem. Doing this will increase your credibility and allow you to build your brand image much quicker.
I’m not asking you to write a thousand words either. Just a couple of sentences should be enough.

11. Invite Guest Contributions from Professionals

I’ve been blogging a number of years now.

Almost every day I get emails from different bloggers and agencies willing to contribute guest posts to my blog.

I don’t accept their offer since I have different plans for my blog, but if I ever enter a new niche I’d definitely check them out and use their content to build my authority.

People guest blog because they’re either looking to build backlinks to their sites or gain exposure in their niche.

If you can offer either of the two, you can attract lots of guest bloggers to your site.

When you keep publishing high-quality posts on your blog (even if they’re written by someone else) people will remember you.

For example, Jeff Bullas is a leading influencer in the content marketing and social media marketing niches.

But he hardly ever publishes content himself.

Almost 90% of the posts on his site are contributed by guest authors.

You can also head over to sites like Quora or LinkedIn Groups, find the groups related to your niche and invite the most active members to contribute posts to your blog.

For example, this group has almost 17000 active members

You can dig through the different thread in this group and connect with the members who’re actively contributing to different discussions

You can offer them incentives like free social media promotion or a backlink to their site in return for a guest post.

“Expert status can be created in less than four weeks if you understand basic credibility indicators,” said Tim Ferriss in the Four Hour Workweek.

12. Make Yourself Sound Official

“Join two or three related trade organizations with official-sounding names,” suggests Tim Ferriss.

While you can certainly do this and it will give you more weight during in-person meetings, it’s not necessary for a niche site owner.

Instead, though, you do need to make sure you’re labeling yourself properly and with confidence.

Beyond giving your instant credibility, it’ll also help you take yourself and your website more seriously.

For example, I run a website on copywriting, and I label myself all across the internet as the Founder of Copy Power, LLC.

And yes, I do add the LLC on the end of it.

Because yes, even though it’s “just a website,” I do have the solid business paperwork behind it, which instantly gives me more credibility.

Gif source

Of course, it might not mean I’m any good at copywriting (I am), but this step is all about establishing your baseline confidence in yourself… that you can do it.

13. Write a Guest Post for an Adjacent Niche Blog

Writing a guest post for a niche that’s adjacent to yours and would share some of your same audience members is probably the best and easiest place to start.

Beyond giving you expert-level credibility by being published somewhere else besides your own site,.

Guest posts (or spots as an interviewee on a podcast) also generates a fair amount of genuinely interested traffic back to your own site.

So you’re killing two birds with one stone.

14. Join Sites Journalists Use to Find Expert Quote Sources

Sites like ProfNet and HARO are great sources journalists and top bloggers use to help them find experts in all kinds of fields.

On the flip side, though, are people who are signed up as sources in their given fields and who sift through inquiries to find ones to respond to that are relevant to their expertise.

As a founder of a niche-focused website, you carry weight in your field, and many writers would be happy to quote you if you take the time to reach out to them in response to the queries they post.

I signed up for HARO, and after responding to a small handful of queries, got featured in an article in TIME.

When that happened, my site was only around six months old, and all my expertise as a financial blogger came from reading those three books I mentioned in step 2 and my general life experience. (See how easy this can be?)

The Curse of Knowledge: A Newbie Niche Marketer’s Best Friend

But let’s say you get this far and are still feeling a little unsure about your lack of knowledge and starting a niche site.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that actually works to your advantage as a newbie starting a niche site. And that’s The Curse of Knowledge.  

“The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that leads better-informed parties to find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed parties,” is how Wikipedia defines it.

According to this logic, I just might be the best person ever to start a WordPress troubleshooting blog.

Because dang, I can’t even begin to tell you how freaking frustrated I get when I get into one of WordPress’s help forums that promises to tell me how to do something.

Only to find a ton of veteran developers telling me what to do in overly complicated language, but not HOW TO DO IT OR WHAT I SHOULD FREAKING CLICK ON.

(Sorry, calming down now.)

You might be better at WordPress than I am, but I’m sure you’ve ran into this at least a few times for other topics, am I right?

Because think about it, if I figure out how to do something in WordPress that’s been bothering the heck out of me.

Don’t you think I’m going to write it in much easier-to-understand and easier-to-follow-along language than those experienced developers?

(Like, telling people WHERE they can find that hidden button they need to click on to activate something?)

You bet.

And the loads and loads of people out there like myself would love me for it.

Wrapping Up The Authority Content Issue

There are several other ways to make your content look more trustworthy, for example by sharing more examples and case studies.

However, the key thing to do when you’re entering a new niche is to follow the already proven success stories.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, just research the already established content creators and learn from their success.

With time, you’ll be able to create your own distinct voice and following, ultimately making you an expert yourself.

eCommerce Marketing: 15 Proven Strategies To Grow Your eCommerce Revenue

Did you know that global eCommerce sales are expected to exceed $6.5 trillion by 2023?

From multi-billion corporations and startups to entrepreneurs and bricks and mortar stores, businesses of all shapes and forms are investing heavily in different eCommerce marketing strategies.

You know why?

Becuase of the countless benefits of eCommerce businesses, consumers are increasingly preferring them over conventional physical stores for their purchase needs.

A study by ShipBob found the major reasons why people are turning to online shopping.

Source

As a result, eCommerce is expected to account for 22% of the total global retail sales in the next 3 years.

But with so much competition, how do you make eCommerce marketing work for your business?

How do you persuade your target audience to buy from you instead of your competitors?

Is eCommerce marketing even a viable option for small businesses and startups with limited budgets?

These are some of the main questions (among several others) that I’ll answer in this detailed eCommerce marketing guide.

Make sure you read it till the end.

What Is eCommerce Marketing And Why Is it important?

eCommerce marketing is a set of different promotional strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your online store, converting it into customers, and turning customers into repeat clients and brand advocates.

It includes off-page traffic generation and brand building strategies to attract new visitors to your site as well as different on-site conversion optimization techniques to ensure that every visitor converts into a customer.

Your online store/website is the center of all your eCommerce marketing strategies. This is where all the different marketing techniques converge and help you build an audience so that you can drive sales from it (I’ll discuss this in more detail later).

Why is it important to invest in eCommerce marketing?

Because it’s not enough to just list your products online or share your product links on different forums and expect people to buy from you.

Studies show that 85% of consumers conduct thorough research before purchasing a product online.

Source

They consider different product features, compare prices, read online reviews, and view product videos and images before deciding whether to buy a product or not.

This is where eCommerce marketing comes in.

Your job as a marketer is to answer the questions of your audience on every step of the buyer’s journey by creating memorable online experiences and high-value content.

Since your prospects can’t physically touch or feel the product, you need to give them additional product information and remove any doubts they have about the quality, pricing, support, or any other aspect of your product.

And even that’s not enough.

Since most of your competitors are already selling online, you need to have a stronger connection with your prospects to stand out and persuade them to buy from you.

You can only do that with a well-planned eCommerce marketing strategy that builds trust with your prospects by addressing their core problems and objections and positioning your product as the best available option.

How To Create A Winning eCommerce Marketing Strategy?

You know it’s crucial to invest in building a comprehensive eCommerce marketing strategy.

But where do you start?

Before we dive into very specific eCommerce marketing techniques, let me quickly describe the steps you need to follow to lay a strong foundation for your eCommerce marketing strategy.

01 – Understand The Purchase Behavior Of Your Audience

You can’t create a business strategy if you don’t understand your target audience.

In eCommerce, this means diving deep into the purchase behavior of your prospects and understanding the different steps they take before ultimately purchasing a product online.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here.

Every business is different which is why you need to analyze the nature of your product and understand the purchase process of your audience.

For example, here’s the product page of one of the world’s biggest shoe brands.

Source

Anyone who has purchased running shoes online knows that you need detailed product customization and feature details to ensure you’re ordering the right shoe for yourself.

This is why this product page has two different size categories plus a video along with several images of the product.

It’s not just about the size either.

You need to see how it looks on your foot, how it feels while running, is it heavy on the foot, does it have a bouncy feel to it, etc.

The same is the case with clothing and apparel products where the customers have entirely different purchase questions than kitchen appliances, for example, where the product specs are much simpler.

It’s no surprise that footwear and apparel are among the top industries with the most product returns.

Source

In short, without understanding the purchase process of your industry, your eCommerce marketing strategy is incomplete.

How to you understand the purchase process of your prospects?

By using analytics and asking the right questions, for example.

  • What do my customers expect from my product? What problem are they looking to solve with it?
  • What’s the price bracket of my product?
  • How many touches are required to make the sale?
  • What’s the average return rate in this industry?
  • What information does a typical customer require before deciding to buy the product?
  • What’s the product shelf life? Is it perishable or long-lasting?
  • Do typically customers purchase multiple products in one go?

You can keep digging as much as you want.

I’m not advocating analysis paralysis here.

But you need to have a fundamental understanding of the relationship between your product and your target audience to devise a successful eCommerce marketing strategy.

We have a detailed audience research guide that shares more actionable tips on this topic.

02 – Choose The Right Platform For Your eCommerce Business

What is the central platform for your eCommerce marketing strategy?

This is a crucial question you need to answer before devising you can actually start marketing your business.

Your eCommerce platform will be the center of all your marketing activities and the place where you’ll be routing traffic from all the different sources.

This is where you’ll build your brand, grow a relationship with your audience, and engage with them regularly to drive sales.

For most businesses, their eCommerce website or online store is the central platform for their marketing activities.

However, many businesses rely entirely on third-party platforms like social media pages, groups, and marketplace websites for driving sales.

For example, Etsy, a popular eCommerce platform for creative work, has more than 2.5 million active sellers on its platform.

Source

Amazon gets almost 1 million new sellers every year while Facebook is used by 90 million+ small businesses and eCommerce companies.

Most experts agree, however, that your central platform should always be under your ownership, not on rented land like Facebook or Amazon.

You can use these sites to drive traffic to your eCommerce site but don’t rely completely on third-party platforms because it puts your business at a huge existential risk.

To create an eCommerce site that you can use as the central platform for your eCommerce marketing strategy, you can use solutions like Shopify or WordPress sites with WooCommerce or other eCommerce features.

03 – Identify The Preferred eCommerce Marketing Channels Of Your Audience

Another crucial question: where does your audience hang out on the internet?

You need to know this in order to target the right people with your content, advertising, and other eCommerce marketing activities.

For example, does your audience primarily use Facebook or can you find them on Instagram and interest as well?

What are the most popular publications, blogs, and forums in your industry?

What kind of marketing content does your audience engage with? Videos, podcasts, and blog posts, or more detailed content like white-papers, research reports, and surveys?

All of this is crucial information that’ll allow you to target the right people and devise an informed eCommerce marketing strategy.

04 – Find The Best Payment Service For Your

The ultimate goal of all your marketing activities is to generate sales.

But that can’t happen if your audience doesn’t have access to the right payment services.

First, find out the popular payment method in your industry and target location.

For example, in most developing countries, cash on delivery (COD) is still the most popular payment mode.

In developed countries, however, modes such as PayPal, credit cards, Google Wallet, and other mobile payment services are more popular.

What’s your target audience using to pay for eCommerce purchases?

Secondly, what are the costs and timelines associated with the different payment methods?

For example, COD payments are quite cheap but can take a long time to actually reach your bank account.

PayPal or credit cards, on the other hand, deposit payments much faster but cost more.

Consider all these factors before choosing your preferred payment method because it will ultimately have an impact on your eCommerce marketing strategy as well.

05 – Applying The 80/20 Rule To Your eCommerce Marketing Strategy

The Pareto Principle also knows as the 80/20 rule, applies to most aspects of your business.

It states the in most cases, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts while the remaining 80% of your efforts produce only 20% of the results.

Source

Here are some of its practical implications.

  • 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your products
  • 80% of your traffic will come from 20% of your marketing efforts
  • 80% of your engagement will be driven by 20% of your content
  • 80% of your search traffic will come to 20% of your top pages

What does that mean?

It means you need to identify the 20% effort that’s driving your business and optimize it to increase profitability.

For example, if 80% of your sales are coming from 20% of your products, keep more stocks, run more ads, and invest more in marketing those products.

The same applies to all other aspects o your business.

There’s a lot more we can discuss in this section but let’s now move towards the more specific eCommerce marketing strategies you can use to grow your business.

eCommerce Marketing Strategies: Ways To Grow Your eCommerce Business

Once you have the fundamentals of your eCommerce marketing business in place, you need to use different marketing channels to drive traffic to your site, convert it into customers, and turn customers in to repeat customers and brand advocates.

You can broadly divide eCommerce marketing strategies into two categories – organic and paid.

Let’s learn more about them.

The Best Organic eCommerce Marketing Strategies

Organic eCommerce marketing strategies are methods that do not require you to pay in order to drive traffic.

However, it doesn’t mean they’re free.

If you’re running an established business, you’d want to hire resources to execute these strategies.

If you’re just starting out though, save money and try doing as much of this yourself as possible.

Let’s dive in.

01 – Create An eCommerce SEO Strategy To Drive Search Traffic

Search engines are among the top traffic sources for eCommerce websites irrespective of their industry.

Research shows that 44% of consumers start their buying journey from a search engine query while a detailed study by SEMRush found that nearly 38% of all eCommerce traffic comes directly from search engines.

Source

In short, you need to have a well-planned eCommerce SEO strategy to drive consistent and qualified search traffic to your site.

eCommerce SEO is a very detailed topic that requires a dedicated article to cover all its aspects.

However, let me give you a quick list of SEO techniques you need to apply to your eCommerce website.

i) eCommerce Keyword Research

SEO starts with keyword research.

Unlike blogs that mostly target informational keywords (eg. “how to cook dog food”), eCommerce sites need to focus on keywords with commercial intent (eg. “buy dog food online”) where the searcher is actively looking to buy a product.

You can start your research by analyzing the top keywords your competitors are ranking for using SEMRush.

For example, here’s the list of keywords I found in the SEMrush Keyword Analysis report for Chewy.com, a leading pet food site.

Analyzing competitors will give you an idea of the kind of keywords you should target.

AnswerThePublic is another tool that will help you come up with lots of different keyword ideas for your site.

Also, explore Amazon product categories and note down any specific keywords they’ve used for your product.

For product sales pages, focus on commercial keywords with buyer intent. For blog content on your eCommerce site, target informational and broad query based keywords with higher search volumes.

ii) eCommerce Website Performance Optimization

Your eCommerce site’s performance has a direct impact on search rankings and traffic.

According to Google, every additional second your site takes to fully load results in a higher bounce rate that negatively impact your search rankings.

Source

Your website performance is based on two things – speed and user experience.

To optimize your site’s load time, check its performance using Google’s Page Insights and follow its recommendations.

User-experience largely depends on device compatibility which means your site should be built using responsive design that supports mobile devices.

This is crucial for your search rankings since mobile-friendliness is a key search ranking factor.

iii) Search Engine Friendly eCommerce Website Architecture

Website architecture refers to the overall page hierarchy of your eCommerce site and how many clicks it takes to reach the lowest level pages on your site.

Your general approach to site architecture should be to

  • Keep it simple and scalable
  • Keep all pages within three clicks from the homepage

Here’s a good example of a search engine friendly site architecture.

Source

If your site has an overly complex architecture, Google bots will find it hard to index your content, and users will also struggle to understand your product categorization.

iv) Product Schema For eCommerce Sites

Search schema is a game-changer for eCommerce sites when it comes to search CTR. There are different types of schema codes but for eCommerce sites product schema codes are the most important.

Here’s how your product pages appear in search results when the schema code is applied.

As you can see, three search results in this screenshot have the schema markup code enabled which shows product rating, reviews, and price in the SERPs.

This additional information results in more clicks on your search results. Read this step by step guide to learn how to apply schema markup to your site

v) On-Page SEO For eCommerce Sites

On-Page SEO is a detailed topic that I have previously covered on NicheHacks.

Here are the most important on-page SEO practices you need to follow

  • Use your target keyword in the page title and H1, H2, H3 tags on your page.
  • Use the target keyword in the first 100 words of your page and throughout the body content wherever relevant.
  • Use synonyms and terms related to your target keyword in your content
  • Use image alt-tags for all product images
  • Write detailed product descriptions and ain for at least 1000-1500 words of high-quality content on every product page.
  • Use internal links from your blog content to product pages.
  • Enable reviews and user-generated content.

Getting backlinks from other high authority sites in your niche is crucial for your search rankings.

It’s a detailed topic that I have covered in this link-building guide.

02 – Develop An eCommerce Email Marketing Strategy To Drive Repeat Sales

Email marketing is one of the most important sales and conversion channels for eCommerce businesses.

The reason is simple.

Research shows it is much easier to sell to your existing customers as compared to acquiring new clients.

Source

Building an email list allows you to stay in touch with your customers, build credibility, and drive repeat sales from them.

On the contrary, if you don’t actively build an email list, you have no way of connecting with your prospects and measuring their relationship with your brand.

Once your email subscribers start trusting you, they also look forward to receiving your emails and promotional offers.

Source

Should you buy an email list for your eCommerce site?

Never!

Not only is it illegal to buy email lists it’s also pretty useless because there’s no relationship between you and the consumers on such lists.

The right way to grow an email list is by offering a free lead magnet on your site which your visitors can download by willingly sharing their email info.

This gives you permission to send them relevant marketing messages that are likely to result in sales.

Ideally, you should route visitors from all the different eCommerce marketing channels like social media, forums, blogs, etc. to your email list.

And once they become subscribers, make sure you keep them engaged with regular emails, share free value, and offer special discounts to drive more sales.

03 – Create Brand Awareness With An eCommerce Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the secret ingredient that can help you build a multi-million dollar eCommerce brand and leave your competitors far behind.

The idea behind content marketing is to create useful, actionable, and detailed content that answers the most burning questions of your audience.

How does it apply to eCommerce?

Research shows that 61% of consumers purchase products because of blog content.

Source

Many marketers mistakenly believe that product reviews and comparisons are the only content types eCommerce businesses should focus on.

Big mistake!

No matter what product you’re selling, you need to create content that focuses on the problems your product solves.

For example, if you’re running an online store that sells fitness products and gym equipment, why do you think people buy from you?

What’s the need your products are fulfilling?

In most cases, people buy fitness equipment to stay healthy, fit, lose weight, look smart, appear attractive, and live a healthy life.

You can connect these needs with your product, and create useful content that people would love to read.

For example, here are a few titles any fitness blog can write about.

  • 11 Ways To Stay Fit During Covid19 Lockdown
  • Sitting Is The New Smoking: How To Stay Physically Active While Working From Home
  • 13 High Impact Five Minute Work-Outs To Boost Your Muscle Mass

Do you see the connection?

In each of those titles, you can naturally mention your products and link to your site’s product pages.

What’s the benefit of content marketing?

It not only helps you rank for high-volume search queries and drives traffic to your site but also establishes your brand as an industry expert that people trust.

It allows you to attract customers who have a need but don’t know how to fulfill it.

Content marketing is a long-term investment that’ll continue to pay back for years to come.

04 – Skyrocket Sales With A Pinterest eCommerce Marketing Strategy

With more than 2 billion monthly searches and 355 million monthly active users, Pinterest is one of the best social networks for eCommerce businesses.

Studies show that the majority of Pinterest users earn more than $75K per year which means they have a considerable disposable income.

But here are the most eye-opening Pinterest stats.

66% of Pinterest users buy something after seeing Pins from a brand while the average order value of a Pinterest referral is $50 (an unusually high number).

Source

So how do you take advantage of Pinterest in your eCommerce marketing strategy?

Here are a few steps you need to follow.

  • Create a Pinterest Business account
  • Enable “Rich Pins” that show additional product information with your Pins along with a call to action to visit your eCommerce store.
  • Create Pinterest Boards for the broad product categories your business sells
  • Populate each board with high-quality images, videos, infographics, and other forms of visual content.
  • Optimize your pins using relevant hashtags and keywords
  • Re-Pin content from other popular Pinterest users in your niche (and corresponding niches).
  • Pinterest algorithms give or exposure to fresh content in “Suggested Pins” and “Related Pins” categories. Therefore try to publish regularly on Pinterest to take advantage.

To understand Pinterest marketing in more detail, read this in-depth guide by Shopify

05 – Grow Your eCommerce Business With Instagram Marketing

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, out of which 63% log in every day, Instagram is a dream platform for any eCommerce business.

Source

The visual nature of Instagram content means it’s ideal for marketing different eCommerce businesses and demonstrating how your product can help your prospects.

This is why 80% of Instagram users rely on the platform and its content when it comes to buying products online.

Source

In short, if you’re running an eCommerce business, you need to have an Instagram marketing strategy in place.

Here are a few quick tips to help you drive eCommerce sales from Instagram.

  • Create an Instagram Business Account.
  • Nail your profile bio, cover image, and profile picture. Make sure they’re engaging and communicate the core essence of your brand.
  • Use calls to action (CTA) and product links in your image descriptions.
  • Always publish high-quality images and videos on Instagram
  • Utilize Instagram stories to spread your message faster.
  • Use product links in Instagram stories to drive more sales.
  • Run Instagram-only promotions and exclusive offers
  • Use relevant hashtags with your posts to reach more people

Developing a comprehensive Instagram eCommerce marketing strategy requires a deep understanding of the platform and its audience. You can learn more about it in this massive Instagram marketing guide.

06 – Use WhatsApp To Engage And Convert eCommerce Customers

WhatsApp is a platform you don’t often hear about when it comes to eCommerce marketing.

Honestly, I can’t find the reason why it is so underutilized.

With more than 2 billion monthly active users around the world and nearly 70 million users in the US,

WhatsApp is one of the best ways to market your eCommerce business.

According to Statista, 53% of WhatsApp users in the US use it daily while 78% use it at least once a week.

Source

And here’s the most jaw-dropping statistic of all; WhatsApp messages have a 90%+ open rate.

Clearly, you need to have a well-planned WhatsApp eCommerce marketing strategy in place to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

Here are a few tips to help you market your business on WhatsApp.

  • Create a WhatsApp Business Account.
  • There are a couple of ways to get WhatsApp subscribers
    • Ask people to share their WhatsApp number with you
    • Create a WhatsApp group and ask people to join it using a public URL.
    • You can accelerate your WhatsApp list building efforts by using the second method and getting people to join your group.
    • Once a user joins your group, you can see their WhatsApp number and can add them separately as a contact.
    • Make sure only the admins can message on your WhatsApp group to avoid spam.
  • Add your prospects to a WhatsApp Broadcast List. Messages from broadcast lists are delivered separately to each recipient. However, to receive messages, the recipient needs to have the sender’s WhatsApp number saved in their phones.
  • Share exclusive “WhatsApp only” offers on your website and encourage website visitors to join your public WhatsApp group.
  • Drive traffic to your site from WhatsApp by sharing product links with your subscribers.
  • Use WhatsApp stories to drive massive engagement and traffic.

To learn more about WhatsApp marketing, I recommend reading this detailed guide by Sumo

07 – Experience Exponential eCommerce Growth With Affiliate Marketing

If you want to skyrocket the growth of your eCommerce business, partner with affiliate marketers.

Affiliate marketing is a zero-risk eCommerce marketing strategy in which you recruit affiliates to market your products and only pay them when they make a sale.

Why recruit affiliates when you can directly market your products?

Studies show that consumers prefer buying through affiliates and influencers since they consider them unbiased as compared to advertisements from brands.

Source

Since you don’t have to pay anything to your affiliates unless they make a sale, I’ve listed this eCommerce marketing strategy under organic marketing methods.

08 – Maximizing ROI With eCommerce Conversion Optimization

Generating traffic to your eCommerce site is just one part of your marketing strategy.

Converting that traffic into customers and subscribers is the other (often neglected) part.

This is where eCommerce conversion optimization comes into play.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of applying different techniques to convert a higher percentage of your traffic into customers and leads.

According to research, 53% of marketers consider CRO crucial for their online marketing strategy.

Source

How do you optimize your site for conversions?

Here are a few actionable tips

  • Improve your site’s load speed and performance
  • Focus on a single Call To Action (CTA) objective for every landing page
  • Build trust by displaying logos of trusted brands on your site that you’ve worked with.
  • Leverage social proof like testimonials, reviews, and success stories to drive more sales.
  • Offer multiple payment options and payment plans.
  • Use high-quality product images and videos that clearly demonstrate the usefulness of your product.

To learn more about CRO, I recommend this in-depth guide by Backlinko

09 – Recover Lost Revenue With Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails

You’ve done all the hard work in driving traffic to your site, and persuading your visitors to click the “Buy Now” button.

But the prospect still doesn’t buy the product and leaves your site without completing the purchase.

Is there anything more heartbreaking than this?

In marketing terms, it’s called cart abandonment and it is one of the biggest challenges eCommerce businesses face.

Just to give you an idea of how big a deal cart abandonment is, research shows that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69.7%

Here are some of the biggest reasons why customers leave without purchasing

Source

However, you can recover a large number of abandoned cart sales with a simple follow up email.

Research shows that companies that send reminder emails to shoppers who’ve abandoned their purchase, manage to recover almost 30% of the abandoned sales.

This is a significant number that’ll help you increase profitability and lower your business losses.

You can configure abandoned cart follow-up emails using one of the top email marketing solutions like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, etc.

10 – Leverage Online Reviews To Attract New Customers

Online reviews are among the most important factors that drive eCommerce sales.

Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends.

Source

Every positive online review about your site increases your chances of attracting new customers.

This is why you need to actively encourage and incentivize your customers to leave positive online reviews about your products.

Offer exclusive discounts on future orders for all customers who leave online positive reviews about your business.

Ask your customers to share your product pictures on their social media profiles and tag their friends who might be interested.

Pay special attention to sites like Yelp, Amazon, Facebook, and any other sites that are popular with your target audience.

11 – Offer Free Delivery To Attract Customers

Free Delivery is the magic word in eCommerce that turns unsure prospects into happy customers.

It has a psychological impact on buyers which makes them believe they’re getting a good deal.

How do you offer free shipping?

By simply adding it to your product’s cost.

Believe it or not, that’s what most eCommerce businesses do (without telling you).

Amazon is the world’s best eCommerce website and there’s a lot you can learn from it.

One of Amazon’s biggest conversion drivers are the related products it shows on every product page.

The screenshot below shows three different headings on the same page under which Amazon show related products.

You can easily replicate this approach on your eCommerce website by showing other closely related products on individual product pages.

This increases the average per customer dollar value and results in a much higher ROI on your marketing efforts.

The Best Paid eCommerce Marketing Strategies

If you’re serious about growing your eCommerce business, you must invest some portion of your revenue in paid marketing techniques.

Here are some of the best-paid eCommerce marketing strategies.

13 – Invest In Influencer Marketing For Exponential Growth

Influencer marketing is the hottest eCommerce marketing trend that’s gaining popularity with every passing day.

The concept is simple.

Instead of investing thousands of dollars in mass advertising, eCommerce brands are now partnering with popular social media users and paying them for recommending products to their followers.

And the results are comparable to any of the top marketing channels (with much lower costs).

Source

To create successful influencer marketing campaigns, you need to identify the right social media influencers who’re popular among your target audience.

Unlike affiliate marketers, influencers are usually paid a fixed price for product promotions.

If you get it right, influencer marketing can drive several times more sales than any of the other eCommerce marketing strategies we’ve discussed so far.

14 – Reach Your Audience Faster Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ads are the lifeline for hundreds of thousands of eCommerce businesses around the world.

They offer advanced audience targeting features that make it very easy to show your ads to exactly the people you want.

For example, here’s a screenshot from Facebook Ad center where you can define the audience you want to target in a particular ad

Start by choosing the countries or cities you want to target in your ad campaign.

When you scroll down, you can choose the age, gender, and languages of the audience you want to target.

These options help you narrow down on your target audience instead of showing your ad to irrelevant users.

But these are still basic targeting features.

To take your ad targeting one step further, you can choose your audience based on their online behavior.

The detailed targeting features allow you to target people who like and follow certain brands on Facebook and have particular interests or hobbies.

You can also choose people by relationship status, life events like birthdays and weddings, recent purchase behavior, and a lot more.

However, you need to understand how Facebook ads work before investing money into them.

This is why I recommend reading this detailed Facebook Advertising Guide we’ve published on our blog.

15 – Retarget Visitors To Drive More Sales

It’s called retargeting and it’s one of the best days to attract high-quality traffic to your site and convert it into customers.

Facebook, Google, and many other leading advertising platforms offer starting features that you can use to display your ads to people who’ve visited your site in the past.

How does it work?

You just need to install a small script to your site’s HT ML code and then start driving traffic to it.

The script tracks all the people who visit your site and then allows you to retarget them with relevant ads on Facebook and other websites.

However, it’s a technical topic that requires more study before you can actually benefit from it.

This beginner’s guide is the perfect resource to get you started.

Are You Ready To Apply The Best eCommerce Marketing Strategies?

There’s a lot more competition in eCommerce than there was just a few years ago.

However, today’s marketers have a lot more resources at their disposal to market their businesses effectively and drive sales.

The eCommerce marketing strategies I’ve discussed in this article are perfect for all kinds of eCommerce businesses and will result in sales if you apply them the right way.

But knowing them isn’t enough

You need to take action.

You’ll make mistakes when you first apply them but you’ll learn and improve on the go.

That’s the only way you can grow your eCommerce business.

Have any questions?

Let me know in the comments section.

eCommerce Marketing – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is eCommerce?

eCommerce or Electronic Commerce refers to the buying and selling of products over the internet as well as processing payments for those products via online payment methods.

How do I market my eCommerce business?

The key to successful eCommerce marketing is in promoting the products your target audience needs and driving traffic to your store from channels like search engines, social media, email lists, and partnerships.

What is the difference between internet marketing and eCommerce?

Internet marketing is a broad terminology that covers the different techniques marketers use to promote their products and services on the internet. eCommerce is a more specific industry that relates to the buying and selling of products on the internet.

What are the best eCommerce marketing strategies?

The best eCommerce marketing strategies include SEO, Social Media Marketing, Google Advertising, Facebook Advertising, Influencer Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing.

What are the different types of eCommerce businesses?

eCommerce businesses can broadly be categorized as Business To Business (B2B) and Business To Consumer (B2C). However, Consumer To Consumer (C2C) and Consumer To Business (C2B) models can also be found in eCommerce.

Which is the world’s largest eCommerce company?

Amazon is the world’s largest eCommerce company with 700K+ employees around the world and annual revenues surpassing $300 billion.

Is it easy for newbies to start an eCommerce business?

Thanks to modern eCommerce solutions like Shopify, Woocommerce, WordPress, and many others, starting and successfully managing an eCommerce business is not very difficult even for newbies.

How do I collect customer payments in eCommerce?

The most popular eCommerce payment methods are Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal, Stripe, Google Wallet, and Cash On Delivery in many of the developing countries around the world.

What are the major benefits of eCommerce?

eCommerce has numerous benefits over conventional physical stores like 24/7 availability, much wider audience range, the ability to handle thousands of customers at once, secure payments, huge product variety, convenience, and much lower operational costs

Exit mobile version